Recently, I am becoming more and more interested in how all of this new technology is affecting children. Now, we see 6 year olds with their own (not their parents’) iphones and 3 year olds with their own ipads. I just find this completely ridiculous. So I came across this article, Data Mining and Kids, that goes over this same issue of kids being exposed to exploiting technologies on the internet. This article was written for Wired by Erik Wecks, a father and writer based in Washington and is primarily written for parents that may want to protect their kids from online data mining. Wecks thinks that parents should worry about how data mining can affect their children by influencing their critical thinking abilities. He says that kids are very easily influenced by what they hear from other people, especially from corporations that try to persuade kids into buying their products because they “need” them. He then states three ways on how parents can go about this issue. The first tip is managing your finances and knowing how you want to use your money before you spend it. The second is that you have to help your children from being tagged in corporate data mining systems by creating fake, fun identities when they need to use them. The third is as simple as paying cash in order to avoid all of this trouble in the first place.

I do agree with Weck that we need to protect children from all of this data mining. I know kids who have to buy at least one thing every time their parents take them out. The parents have to be careful about exposing their kids to this type of marketing and should help their kids be more disciplined in what they need to buy and what they don’t really need. I don’t agree on his whole cash argument though. In this day and age, it’s just too much to be carrying cash everywhere. I love having a credit card. I feel its safer, you don’t need to carry a whole wad of cash, and it’s just easier. So I think the big issue is just really learning how to discipline yourself and your child on how to manage your finances. Every time you see that ad for that new shiny gadget, you need to be strong enough to say “no, I don’t need it.”