Typically when children participate in a study, it's their parents that have to consent. I don't know how scientific research would work any other way?
Also, what do we know about the contract they signed? It's probably not the regular privacy policy.
Informed consent is kind of a grey area. How much do you normally know about the consequences of your actions? How can you prove that you know what you're doing? Should your freedom to enter an agreement be restricted if you can't prove that you know what you're doing?
Legally, you prove consent by signing a contract. Sometimes people go above and beyond that to make sure people really and truly know what they're getting into, but there's a question how far you should go.
I don't think we can know just from reading this article how informed the people signing up were. They didn't interview anyone to find out.
Typically when children participate in a study, it's also been previously approved by an Institutional Review Board, and the IRB expects to either see that the potential harm is minimal, or that the potential benefit is easily great enough to justify the risks.
It's hard for me to see either of those cases being a slam dunk here. There's at least some potential for serious harm in the event of a data breach. And the potential benefit - an already rich company getting even richer - doesn't carry a whole lot of moral weight.
I believe IRBs are only required for federally funded research such as that performed by universities.
I’ve never heard of corporate market research being reviewed and approved by an IRB. Not sure how that would work since the board would hardly be independent anyway, but I’d guess the main reason it doesn’t happen is there is no law requiring it.
In most places, you need to be very, very sure that research subjects understand what they are agreeing to.
Passively reading something usually isn’t enough. The minimum often some kind of interactive explanation that includes a way for subjects to ask questions. I’ve heard tell of groups giving short “quizzes” for experiments with wired requirements and side effects.
For kids specifically, you often need to get both the parents’ consent and the child’s assent. The details vary with the child’s age (older kids opinions get more weight) and the nature of the research (kids can opt out of basic research, but the parents might be able to override the kids’s desire to (say) avoid a shot if it’s part of a potentially lifesaving clinical trial).
The company I work for used to have a big full-page opt-in form for text messages. Then one day it was pulled from the web site. Why? Because our usually very privacy-conscious legal team decided that if anyone gives us their phone number anywhere, it counts as consent to receive text messages.
Very sad, and in my opinion slimy. I’m glad I’m not on the social media team.
Also, what do we know about the contract they signed? It's probably not the regular privacy policy.
Informed consent is kind of a grey area. How much do you normally know about the consequences of your actions? How can you prove that you know what you're doing? Should your freedom to enter an agreement be restricted if you can't prove that you know what you're doing?
Legally, you prove consent by signing a contract. Sometimes people go above and beyond that to make sure people really and truly know what they're getting into, but there's a question how far you should go.
I don't think we can know just from reading this article how informed the people signing up were. They didn't interview anyone to find out.