Data ownership judgments in childhood

As adults, we experience discomfort when we hear about how our data has not been safeguarded by apps. Despite this being a common experience, the psychological processes that underlie people's reasoning about data ownership and rights are poorly understood. Using a developmental approach, the current investigation examines the psychology of data ownership. We test the specific proposal that people have a coherent theory of ownership that leads them to view data as owned and under owners' control at the same developmental time point. In both studies (N = 218), children ages 5-12 were told about a user who shares personal and general information with an app. Children then had to decide who it belongs to (Study 1) and who is in charge of it (Study 2). During middle childhood, children view users as owners of personal information and therefore entitled to control it suggesting coherence in their representations of non-physical property types. Findings also suggest that by 8-years-old children have the cognition in place to think of data as property and therefore understand their data rights online.