The Future of the Self

Understanding Personalization in Childhood and Beyond

Natalia Kucirkova

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800439467
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Early Childhood Education

In a time of automated personalized ads, artificially intelligent social robots, and smart devices in the homes of millions, it has become critically important to understand the impact of our digitized selves - especially upon our younger generations. When children as young as three can take their own selfies, and customise their own avatars, how should we respond to the opportunity and threat of digital personalization for young children?
Tracing thematic links between trends that are often addressed separately, and drawing on multidisciplinary research evidence, Kucirkova offers a comprehensive account of the effects of digitally-mediated personalization on children's development of 'self'. Looking to the future, she provides a balanced account of the positives and negatives of personalisation against the backdrop of broader societal trends, such as globalisation/localisation, (de)centralisation of services and communication. Providing critical thinking tools, Kucirkova challenges us to understand the profound implications that the personal data economy and network-based technologies might have played in our own understanding of ourselves and each other.

1

PERSONALIZATION–PLURALIZATION

The root of personalization is “person” – as in an individual human being but there are at least 10 definitions of “personal” in the Latin dictionary (Note 1.1). The verb “personalize” means to “design or produce (something) to meet someone’s individual requirements¹” (Oxford Dictionary; Note 1.2) and its derived noun “personalization” was found in almost all of the contemporary dictionaries I searched. As a multi-dimensional phenomenon, personalization is likely to undergo a transformation associated with multi-dimensional concepts (e.g., intelligence and multiple intelligences, Gardner, 2008), or the need for multiple adjectives, as it has been the case with “literacy” (e.g., visual literacy, emotional literacy) and pre-fixes, (e.g., multi-literacies, biliteracy). A disadvantage of the multi-dimensionality of personalization is that it can be associated with different meanings when used by different stakeholders. In this chapter, I clarify some of these varied definitions but I strongly remind readers that different cultures, contexts and circumstances will attach different values to the meanings of personalization.

The individualism–collectivism dualism still pervades a great deal of contemporary writing, and individualism, in particular, is often associated with personalization. The human mind likes to simplify definitions and organize things into opposite categories (objects are either digital or non-digital, cultures are either individualistic or collectivist, Haste, 2013). Conceptualizing the world in binary terms (e.g., urban vs rural or Eastern vs Western differences) might be useful for developing policy measures in proportion to real need. However, binary categories are not favored by socio-cultural researchers (Note 2.3): we see reality as the glue between dichotomies. Nevertheless, the popular claims that today’s generation is a “selfie generation” or “Generation Me” (Note 2.2) prompt important questions that we cannot skirt around.

In individualistic cultures the “self” is described as autonomous, seeking freedom at all costs, and placing personal goals above the interests of others. In collectivist cultures, the self is interdependent, seeking social cohesion (Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Triandis (1990) describes individualism as ice and collectivism as water. He explains that as cultures are becoming more modern and dynamic they are also becoming more individualist (Singelis, Triandis, Bhawuk, & Gelfand, 1995). Some researchers consider individualism as a defining feature of the American culture that explains US nationalism and drives for self-reliance (Bellah, Madsen, Sullivan, Swidler, & Tipton, 2007). Others argue that individualism and collectivism co-exist in larger social groups of cultures as well as smaller groups of families (Tamis-LeMonda et al., 2008).

Following my study of personalization in Japan and the UK (which could be arguably labeled as collectivist and individualist cultures), I perceive the connection between personalization and individualism as a red herring that muddles the waters of individual differences (more on this in Chapter 6). The values connected to individualism co-occur with extreme personalization but with my socio-cultural hat on, I argue that personalization is about individuality, not individualism. In other words, personalization is not a menacing force that splinters society into millions of individual islands but it is a technique that highlights the uniqueness of every individual. This uniqueness is what we share with other people. If personalization were to be described with Triandis’ individualism–collectivism metaphor of ice and water, then it could be said that personalization reflects the innumerable forms of water, for example, raindrops, vapor, glaciers, dew, and recognizes an individual in every single one. But the water analogy remains just that – an analogy, because humans are more than water molecules. The edges of our own selves are permeable and leak into others whether we like it or not. When we cross these borders, the self merges with the other. The exact breaking point is different for each individual, and that to me, is the most exciting part in the study of personalization.

THE COMMERCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL USE OF PERSONALIZATION

This book is not an analysis of industry trends, but I must note some important differences between a business and educational approach to personalization. To start off with, in early childhood studies, the question is “whether” to use digital personalization in schools, but in business the question is “when” and “how” to personalize individual journeys. In education, personalization starts offline and with the right software, it can continue to online learning. In business, personalization soars the other way round: online recommendations are moving to personalized offline shopping experiences, with physical shops and Internet of Things used to cater for every customer wherever they are. From the educational perspective, business personalization is paying lip service to the deeply personalized practices followed by educators: knowing the children in their classroom is the starting point. Business target customers with personalized marketing even if they know just the customer’s name and demographic characteristics. Given that the business and educational approaches to personalization are different, they require careful thought before cross-application. For instance, while in business the bigger the company (in terms of revenue), the more sophisticated personalization techniques they can afford. In education, the smaller a school, the deeper its personalization possibilities.

The commercial use of personalization is moving more and more in the direction of “deep” or “ultra-personalization.” Many online companies have realized that if they introduce personalization early, they can gain a distinct competitive advantage by getting new customers and retaining them (Boudet, Gregg, Rathje, Stein, & Vollhardt, 2019). These businesses provide one-to-one customer support, track the user’s transactions, likes, preferences, purchases and browsing history. With the commercialization trends at all levels of public education in the UK and USA, many educational establishments are, unfortunately, adopting the business speak and desire of scalable deep personalized experiences for each child.

Steve Jobs is known in association with personal technologies but he is also known for actively shielding his children from technology use at home – an approach adopted by many parents working in the technology industry. Perhaps the parents who promote “technology-free” and “data-free zones” do so because they are well-aware of the problems of extreme personalization associated with intense data harvesting by personal mobile technologies. In order to articulate what “optimal personalization” for children might be, we need to abandon commercial definitions in favor of solid childhood research studies. There are two terms – personification and anthropomorphism – that are related to personalization and that are in developmental psychology important for the study of children’s behavior.

PERSONIFICATION AND ANTHROPOMORPHISM

Children often engage in anthropomorphism, that is attribute human-like characteristics to objects or animals. Adults have this tendency too; how often have you said “My phone battery died?” There are several documented associations, for example, people who feel lonely tend to attribute human characteristics to objects or pets more than those who are not lonely (Epley, Waytz, & Cacioppo, 2007). For young children, there is a clear association between anthropomorphism and their emotional attachment to specific objects. Children’s stuffed toys or small blankets, the “transitional objects,” as Donald Winnicott (1951) called them, are part of children’s identity and they love to anthropomorphize them. Children believe these objects and toys have thoughts and feelings and are irreplaceable (Gjersoe, Hall, & Hood, 2015). In contrast, children are less attached to their other toys, which they perceive in terms of the material properties, and which they describe as objects that can be replaced or replicated (Hood & Bloom, 2008; Hood, Gjersoe, & Bloom, 2012).

An important concept in studying anthropomorphism is the human propensity to simplify reality. According to the French psychologist Albert Michotte (1945/2017), our perception of reality is often primitive and based on our senses, which gives us the impression of causality in events that are not linked to each other. Similarly, thinking of certain objects as having a soul and self-generated behavior, simplifies reality. The reason children – and in some contexts, we adults too – engage in anthropomorphism could be the desire to simplify a world that does not fit our limited schemas. A different philosophical explanation brings in a subjective sense of reality that is influenced by our creative involvement in shaping it. In his book Brainstorms, philosopher Daniel Dennett (1978) explains that people revert to personification when they cannot predict how objects will operate. People personify objects because they want them to behave rationally, they imbue objects with intentionality when they do not know how the objects work or how they are designed. Dennett suggests that this typically happens when people cannot predict an objects’ behavior from its size, weight and other physical characteristics. In the push to develop smart technology, designers have gone to some length to create technologies which would be compact, self-sufficient and difficult to fix by users. If we do not know how an iPhone or Alexa are designed, we then tend to perceive the technologies as autonomous and potent. We give them a “persona” – Alexa becomes “controlling” and an iPhone “clever.”

There is an easy way to reduce this tendency: direct involvement in the making of technologies. An experiment with Israeli children demonstrated that when children were involved in creating their own robots, their tendency to personify the robots was much lower. Children who programmed the robots, thought of them in technological rather than human-like terms (Kuperman & Mioduser, 2012). Direct involvement in the creation of tools and a sense of choice in how the objects behave is part of agency and is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3. What is relevant here is the sequence of personification: once we personify something we can then personalize it. This is why when a customer shops online the retailer will collect the information on what the customers buy, and create a “customer persona” so they can send the customer personalized advertisements. Similarly, avatars in virtual games begin with basic personal characteristics (e.g., a white man in his 40s) and, as players progress through the game, features are added for players to personalize the avatar (e.g., a white man with brown hair in his 40s, wearing glasses and speaking with a Scottish accent). Few people realize that their own use of smart technology will make their smart gadgets more personalized to their persona and, therefore, conditions them to feel more attached to them. This is partly why agentic personalization is so intensively discussed in this book. Agency to live is inborn but agency to live in a society is developed throughout life, with the support of others. One of the first information a child gets to individualize their place in a society is their name.

NAME-BASED PERSONALIZATION

My broader definition of personalization as a nexus of products and processes encompasses the fact that, in research and business, personalization is a catch-all term for anything based on data that relate to an individual human being – the data could be a child’s voice, their date of birth or genetic sequence. However, name-based personalization holds a specific interest to commercial and research labs. It is rare to conduct any type of conversation or participate in any social transaction without disclosing your name: seeing and hearing one’s name is a vital identity-validation technique. We like it when people know our name and conversely, we get offended when they say our name incorrectly. There are thousands, if not millions, of songs titled with an individual’s name, Julia by Beatles or the composition For Elise by Ludwig van Beethoven – to name my favorite ones.

The psychological concept “name-effect” refers to the extreme familiarity we have with our own names and the individual letters that make them up (Nuttin, 1985). A child’s first name is typically the first word that a child can write. Experiments show that out of all the 26 letters in the English alphabet, children and adults show preference for their own name letters (Jones, Pelham, Mirenberg, & Hetts, 2002). Commercial producers capitalize on this preference: customer services will end each phrase with a client’s name to emphasize that the client is getting a personalized, premium, service. Seeing your name on packaging, a piece of clothing or a website, engenders a considerable novelty effect because most resources are non-personalized (especially if you have a unique name). No wonder then that the Web 2.0 is designed to prioritize names to aggregate content about an individual online – if you wanted to search for information about yourself, you would not begin with your date of birth but your full name.

Names help us navigate unknown territories online and offline. An example from educational practice is the use of children’s names for facilitating home-school transition. It is often recommended that on a parent’s first visit to school, practitioners ask them the history of their child’s name. A simple question “why did you give your child this name?” is a way of finding out the circumstances of a child’s birth and begin a conversation about the child’s background. The more the teacher knows about the child, the more personalized their pedagogy can be. Kindergarten teachers know many creative ways of making children’s names visible, with name tags and labels attached to a child’s belongings. This not only teaches children what is theirs but also strengthens the relationship with their own name.

Children’s books teach children about names too – The Name Jar by Yangsook Choi recounts the touching story of Unhei, a Korean girl who has recently migrated to America. Unhei is initially upset because Americans cannot pronounce her name. She considers adopting a Western name, something that many immigrant children do (instead of Sachihiro or Jeong, they become John or Amy). The book, however, conveys the message that given names carry a specific meaning both for the giver and the receiver. Names associated with one’s country or culture of origin should be kept intact throughout one’s life, the book suggests.

In Chapter 7, I will discuss children’s personalized books – a publishing success story of the 2000s. Personalized books use children’s names instead of fictional characters’ names; for example, Natalia instead of Cinderella. These books are a popular way to motivate children to read, as they instill feelings of ownership over the story and a sense of belonging to the world of literature. Ownership is particularly important for children who do not have many books at home. An example of how organizations can harness the name-ownership association is from the “Imagination Library,” funded by Dolly Parton, which puts children’s names on the mailing label when sending them free books. An example from adult services is using customers’ names in email marketing.

The flipside of all the hype concerning personal names is “namelessness.” In a poignant documentary about the mass murder by Anders Behring Breivik in July 2011, a sister of one of the 69 murdered Norwegians refuses to call the terrorist by his name, saying she will not say his name on TV or grant him any place in her language, in her body, in her memory: we de-humanize people by not naming them. Refusing to give a real name can also act as a precautionary or protectionist measure – criminal witnesses often receive a new name to protect their identity. Monikers, on the contrary, are used to manage expectations. In Episode 1 of the series Doctor Who, the main protagonist tells Martha Jones that his name is “The Doctor.” The shroud of mystery around this name immediately hooks viewers.

From a capitalist perspective, different names carry different values – those who are less famous or in a lower position of power want to be associated with the “bigger names.” We are all guilty of occasionally name-dropping during conversations to impress others. In an era of celebrity endorsements personal and corporate names are highly valued commodities that are actively traded for their reputation. Thus, names can be also understood as a personal brand that reflects tenure associated with family, class and other forms of social capital (Bourdieu, 1986).

Given the personal and social significance of names to children and adults alike, it is perhaps no surprise that name-based personalization is so heavily commercialized. However, attaching a name to a generic product or mentioning it at the end of every line in a sales conversation is a very basic method of personalization. More complex personalization – and more sophisticated (mis)uses –occur with diverse personal data.

PERSONALIZATION BASED ON DIVERSE PERSONAL DATA

The amount of diverse digitized personal data is unprecedented in human history: digitized personal data are multimodal (audio, visual, tactile and olfactory), they include an individual’s identity markers (name, date of birth and address), biomarkers (voice, fingerprint and health records), measurement and behavioral records (educational test scores, online browser history, purchasing habits and travels to various locations), as well as private history documented in photos and videos. In terms of amount, with almost five billion people online in 2020, there are so many zeroes in the big data stat...