“The findings are disturbing”: This unsettling statement speaks to the truth about some of the education apps our students are using on a day-to-day basis.
Education technology, or edtech, has proven to be vital to students’ learning, especially since the pandemic. But are there privacy implications that ought to be reconsidered? New research from Internet Safety Labs, a non-profit software product safety testing company, suggests that the answer is yes.
The findings come at a time when privacy concerns within America’s schools are making headlines. In Louisiana, Superintendent of Education Cade Bramley urged district leaders to “immediately remove TikTok or any other applications developed by ByteDance Limited from any publicly funded devices,” claiming the app’s lack of data privacy measures is “extremely concerning.”
The issue, however, spans far beyond TikTok.
Most apps used in the classroom show “clear” and “pervasive” risks to children and families, the organization details in a new report entitled “2022 K12 Edtech Safety Benchmark.”
Using a random sampling of 13 schools in each state, 663 schools in total were observed, covering 1,722 apps.
According to the findings, nearly all apps (96%) share students’ personal information with third-party entities, primarily advertisers and monetization parties (78%). Among these apps, 28% were unrelated to education, such as The New York Times, YouTube or Spotify, “effectively providing no limits or guardrails for children,” the report reads.
Most notably, nearly one-fourth (23%) of school apps expose students to digital ads, which indicates there is an increased risk that their personal data is being sent to advertising networks. More than half of these apps (13%) use what is known as “retargeting ads,” which use cookies and site history to provide the user with targeted ads.
“At a minimum, it fuels marketers’ and data brokers’ personal data profiles ultimately used to bombard young minds with highly targeted and persuasive advertising or opinions,” according to the report. “At worst, in the wrong hands, it can lead to emotional trauma, aberrant seduction or even physical danger with location information.”
By no surprise, Google and Apple were the two most heavily trafficked platforms observed. Google “dominates” education technology in the K12 sphere as the number one supplier of both hardware and software. It was found that 68% of apps sent data to Google, whereas 36% sent data to Apple.
“This benchmark is a much-needed measurement of just how safe edtech technology is for our youth,” said Lisa LeVasseur, executive director of ISL. “We all know how much personal data is already flowing to companies that excel in monetizing it, but this research provides an accurate look at the reality of where student data is going. We hope this research will highlight how urgent the problem is and further our efforts to create strong software product safety standards that lead to positive change and make interned-connected technology safe for everyone.”
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