In 2006, British mathematician Clive Humbly shouted, \u201cData is the new oil.\u201d More than a decade later, this still rings true in the current digital economy where data has become a lucrative commodity controlled by a few giants. Tech companies, such as Google and Meta, collect a significant amount of data from their users\u2019 activities. They feed this data to their recommendation algorithms which then tailor people\u2019s digital experiences on their platforms.
While use of such data has arguably improved the online consumer experience for many, there are growing concerns about privacy and the protection of personal information. In recent years, society has faced some of the downsides of mass data collection and what it means for personal privacy, safety, and autonomy. The need for stronger protections against the misuse of data is especially apparent with minors. In 2021, former Meta (then doing business as Facebook) employee Frances Haugen revealed that the social media company had long known of the negative effects of its platform Instagram on teen mental health. The Wall Street Journal reported that despite the company\u2019s knowledge of the harm it was causing, it had continued detrimental business practices focusing on \u201cvideos, feeds of algorithmically chosen content and tools that touched up people\u2019s faces.\u201d Social media usage involving personalized content has since been further linked with an increase in anxiety and depression in young adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 2006, British mathematician Clive Humbly shouted, \u201cData is the new oil.\u201d More than a decade later, this still rings true in the current digital economy where data has become a lucrative commodity controlled by a few giants. Tech companies, such as Google and Meta, collect a significant amount of data from their users\u2019 activities….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,22,452],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles-2","category-print-archive","category-57-4"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4404,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4402\/revisions\/4404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/publications.lawschool.cornell.edu\/cilj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}