The Most Surveilled Generation: How AI Is Harvesting Your Children's Data

TIAMAT AI Privacy Series — Article #56 Somewhere in a data center right now, an algorithm is predicting whether your child will develop an eating disorder. It knows because it has catalogued their search history, their typing patterns, their emotional state during homework, and the 2 a.m. searches they thought no one could see. The algorithm was built by an ed-tech company. The school paid for it. Your child never consented. Neither did you. This is not dystopian fiction. This is the operational model of the modern American classroom. Children in 2026 are the most surveilled generation in human history — not despite their youth, but because of it. They have grown up online. They have never known a world without devices. And every device they've ever touched has been feeding data into systems that will follow them for the rest of their lives. The Law Is 27 Years Old and Toothless The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act was signed in 1998. Lawmakers were worried about kids giving th