Long Term Harm

Sean

7. Januar 2026January 7, 2026 · 7 Min. Lesezeit7 min read

Part 5 - English Schools Have Become Surveillance Institutions

The surveillance of children in English schools isn't just a privacy concern for today, it creates lasting harms that extend far into adulthood and shape the kind of society we become.

Children learn what's normal from their daily experiences. When surveillance is omnipresent from age two onwards, it becomes invisible - not something to question or resist, but simply the way the world works.

Research by childhood psychologists has raised serious concerns about this normalisation effect. Tonya Rooney, a lecturer at the University of New England, Australia, warns that being surveilled from such a young age "may condition children to grow desensitised and immune to being filmed and watched in other spaces, and normalise the abnormal practice of having their every move recorded and observed."

The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada's 2012 report on surveillance technologies and children concluded: "Some have posited that growing up with surveillance as a daily presence may even normalize the practice over time and influence a shift in social norms away from privacy." The report emphasized: "Surveillance in childhood can have a profound effect on understanding privacy later on life. Children learn through experience, and if they do not grow up in an environment where privacy is practiced, they may not learn how privacy works."

When children experience constant photographing, behavoural tracking, biometric scanning, and digital monitoring as standard features of school life, they internalise the message that privacy is neither expected nor valued. They grow into adults who:

This isn't speculation. As surveillance whistleblower Edward Snowden warned: "A child born today will grow up with no conception of privacy at all. They'll never know what it means to have a private moment to themselves, an unrecorded, un-analyzed thought."

This conditioning serves authoritarian interests. A population that has never experienced privacy - that sees surveillance as protection rather than control - is far less likely to resist when surveillance expands into new domains of life.

Data Exists Forever

Digital records don't fade like memories, The embarrassing moment captured on a school's Facebook page when you were seven, the behavioural note logged in CPOMS when you were struggling at age ten, the biometric template captured for school dinners - they're persistent.

The "Right to be Forgotten" under GDPR exists in theory. In practice, it's nearly impossible to enforce comprehensively once data has been shared widely. An image posted to a school blog gets cached by Google, archived by Internet Archive, screenshot and saved by parents. The dataset shared with researchers gets incorporated into published studies. Biometric templates stored by vendors may linger in backups.

Young adults are discovering that their childhood digital footprints follow them:

The first generation to have comprehensive digital records created without their consent is now reaching adulthood. We're only beginning to understand the long-term consequences.

If data exists, it will eventually be breached. This isn't pessimism-it's statistical certainty.

UK governments surveys of educational institutions reveal the scale of the problem:

An ICO investigation published in September 2025 analysed 215 personal data breach reports from the education sector between January 2022 and August 2024 caused by insider attacks. The finding were alarming:

Schools and EdTech companies lack the sophisticated security infrastructure of financial institutions or government agencies. They're handling sensitive data about millions of children with limited cybersecurity budgets, overstretched IT staff, and teachers who may not understand data protection principles.

When breaches occur, what gets stolen is devastating:

Chilling effects on Development

Children are aware that their behaviour is constantly monitored, scored, and recorded learn to self-censor. They become less willing to take risks, make mistakes, or express unconventional opinions - all essential parts of healthy development.

Research on surveillance and child development has documented these concerning affects.

Academic studies note that "reliance on surveillance-based approaches to monitoring online activities of children (aged 5-14) may actually be leading to a greater danger: a decrease in opportunities for children to have experiences that help them develop autonomy and independence."

Professor Jason Nolan of Ryerson University, who researches early childhood and technology, found that children as young as 18 months are aware they are being watched and require privacy and autonomy for healthy psychological development.

When teachers are also surveillance operators (logging concerns in CPOMS, photographing constantly for Tapestry, tracking behaviour for ClassDojo) children learn they cannot fully trust the adults meant to support them. Every interaction might be documented. Every confidence might be logged.

This fundamentally alters the teacher-student relationship, transforming what should be supportive mentorship into monitored compliance.

Parents have lost meaningful control over their children's privacy:

The trust relationship between parents and schools - essential for effective education - breaks down when schools operate surveillance systems that parents cannot meaningfully opt out of or even fully see.

This isn't a partnership. It's coercion dressed up as safeguarding.

The harms described in this part compound over time. Today's surveilled children become tomorrow's surveilled adults, who raise the next generation of children in an even more comprehensive surveillance infrastructure. Privacy, once lost, is extraordinarily difficult to reclaim - especially when an entire generation never experienced it to begin with.

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Sean

Not accepting zaps. Shove em up your hardware wallet.

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