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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores how surveillance technologies are used by children, parents and teachers in Germany, and how such technologies can be studied methodologically and ethically when children are restricted from mobile phone use, or when some surveillance technologies are banned in a legal context.

Paper long abstract:

Increasingly in an international context, parents, teachers, but also children themselves are using tracking technologies to monitor movements, sports activities and educational achievements. Such practices are often linked to fears of children's safety, ideas of 'good upbringing' or children's own desires to monitor progress. Yet such technologies also collect large amounts of data about children with unforeseeable future implications. In Germany, some technologies have been banned such as voice activated smart dolls, and children are taught about 'media competence' to protect themselves online.

Drawing on initial ethnographic data collected in Munich, Germany, this paper explores surveillance practices and processes that take place within and outside school institutions, and how an anthropologist can access this data ethically and sensitively especially when fieldnote data involves taking handwritten notes e.g. on children's movements or activities yet without tracking children's movements through app data. How do smart technologies enable more horizontal forms of surveillance – e.g. children tracking their peers, siblings, parents or teachers, or even the anthropologist?

The paper discusses questions of positionality, trust and access when exploring surveillance practices and media use in a school context as an adult researcher exploring both parent and child perspectives. In Bavaria, phones have been banned at schools, but rules are currently being relaxed, which is changing media practices. The paper considers innovate approaches to studying surveillance such as children or parents designing their ideal technologies for tracking achievements or movements. Moreover, the paper discusses how the least adult role might be beneficial as a researcher.