Legislation
Internationally, a wide range of legislation has been developed in order to manage and protect individual’s personal information. Canada’s public and private sector are governed separately in terms of privacy protection.
Internationally, a wide range of legislation has been developed in order to manage and protect individual’s personal information. Canada’s public and private sector are governed separately in terms of privacy protection.
Time spent using devices is one of parents’ top concerns when it comes to their kids’ digital lives – and is the number one source of conflict between parents and children relating to technology use. It’s tempting for parents to act authoritatively and lay down the law on the number of hours their kids can spend on the computer, but in order to effectively address excessive use, there needs to be an active, voluntary commitment on the part of the young person to control their behaviour. Otherwise, kids will just find ways to work around their parents and be left to their own devices once they’re old enough to leave the house.
We don’t always hear the clock ticking when we’re online, and young people are no exception. Between doing research for homework, talking with friends, updating social media and playing games, it’s easy to see how kids and teens might lose track of time.
Canada is a highly connected country: 96 percent of us have access to the internet. As technologies have improved to allow corporations, law enforcement and others to gather information and monitor activities online, media reports about violations or breaches of privacy are more and more frequent.
It’s as important for advertisers to reach the right people as it is to make an appealing ad, so they have developed many different ways of targeting ads effectively. Online advertising lets marketers match different ads with individual users. This section looks at how that’s done and how it affects kids’ privacy.
Sociologist and surveillance scholar David Lyon defines surveillance as “any collection and processing of personal data, whether identifiable or not, for the purposes of influencing or managing those whose data have been garnered.”
"Given the opportunity, young people do care about issues relating to the harnessing and use of their information online. They want to know what information is being taken from them, and why. They want companies to be more open about how data is being used."
Contrary to stereotypes, youth do care about their privacy.
Thanks to the networked nature of the internet, in which information is always flowing both ways, there's no shortage of ways for apps, devices and websites to collect information about us.