Understanding the Privacy Implications of Smart Homes: Increasing Children’s Privacy Literacy around IoT Data Collection

Smart home Internet of Things (IoT) devices are increasing in popularity as they promise convenience for homeowners. These devices collect data on occupants that can reveal behaviours and lead to privacy violations, especially concerning children. Therefore, it is important that we examine ways that we can help to educate children about how this data is collected and what it can be used for to raise standards around privacy literacy. Our proposed research will use a drawing-telling methodology to help understand what children currently think about the privacy implications of IoT devices. It will also use focus groups to understand how teachers are addressing privacy literacy in the classroom. This will inform a design-based research phase that will yield an educational intervention that aims to increase privacy literacy. This intervention will be evaluated in classrooms to help us understand how we can raise children’s privacy literacy standards around IoT devices.