A disagreement this morning centres on pocket money. Our son, who is seven, believes he deserves a hike for looking after the plants in the garden, which he does on a regular basis during the week. (However, Ireland’s summer isn’t particularly punishing on vegetation so, how much tending do the plants actually require?) Presently, he receives €2 every Friday, but he’s seeking €4.
With regards to pocket money, there is a divergence of opinion among child-rearing professionals. Some advocate for incentivised chores, while others maintain a clear division between remuneration and household help. This is to prevent cultivating a sense of entitlement in children who might demand payment for simple tasks like folding their own underwear. These discussions not only raise questions about effective parenting but also about the correct way to handle transactions.
Modern times have seen the advent of apps designed to impart financial knowledge to kids and facilitate parents in monetarily rewarding them. In Britain, there’s Go Henry, while Ireland has Revolut 18 for the purpose. These digital offerings usually have similar capabilities. In addition to an integral transfer feature (Given the decreasing prevalence of cash among modern parents) and a savings aspect, there is usually a chores feature, like Revolut 18’s Challenges, which allows parents to assign monetary value to chores.
These apps also typically incorporate parental controls, enabling parents to monitor their child’s expenditure habits. They can also block specific categories such as alcohol, explicitly adult content or in-game purchases like Fortnite skins. With Revolut 18, a junior app can be established and linked to their parents. “The child has no capacity for unsupervised activity,” says a representative from Revolut.
An abundance of advice is readily available to us. It is likely that no generation in the past has been subjected to such persistent counselling.
Do you employ a financial app to distribute your children’s pocket money? You may be revealing highly personal data.
These apps equip young individuals with essential tools for achieving financial savviness in the future. They afford parents a level of supervision. However, what’s in it for the companies that are offering these services?
Recruiting customers early is obviously beneficial. Revenue from transactions and subscription fees also plays a role. Furthermore, critics propose that these companies might be gathering data about transactions — what can be inferred from purchases and how this information can be turned into a profitable asset for advertising, logistics, risk analysis or as a training dataset for AI systems.
Paypal’s American payment application, Venmo, operates much like a monetary version of Facebook, where users can annotate their transactions with informative messages. Historically, these data points have been used by curious onlookers to collate a range of information from illicit cannabis transactions to mental health cases. Businesses have also experimented with transactional data for marketing purposes, identifying big life events such as weddings, births or moving houses. Some have even used these informations to make decisions about credit and insurance, ascertaining whether a customer has sought counselling or struggled with addiction.
But what type of financial data could payment applications be amassing about users under 18 years? Are there any trade benefits from gathering data about pocket money or rewards for duties done around the house? It seems less plausible that children’s finance apps are keen to ascertain whether children have earned a reward for oral hygiene than they are about the flow of money within a family unit.
Bjorn Nansen, a notable academic in media studies at Melbourne University, recognising a potential value in understanding the economic relationship between parents and their children, observing the rewards system effective, whether it involves compensating for chores or random or periodic payments. Compiling such data, he argues, can offer valuable insights into how modern families manage their finances.
Moreover, having a user’s long-term data gives the app an unparalleled perspective on the economic narrative of a user as they age and their financial identity evolves.
Ultimately, according to Nansen, these platforms facilitate conditions that encourage and normalise the perpetual tracking of the financial lives of children.
The narrative behind the financial transactions between my offspring and I, I often muse. Beyond the predictable €2 every Friday, it’s the deeper, emotionally-charged payments that make me contemplative. These continuous hospital stays due to my child’s persistent health condition warrant a gift each time. I’m aware of the unhealthy parenting habits this could instil, likened to bribing children to clean their rooms. It’s as if I’m trying to make amends for circumstances beyond my control. A cannula holds the value of €15, an overnight stay approximately €50. I sometimes ponder if the worth should decrease as these events become less distressing and more routine – a grim perspective.
On trips away for work, another gift is warranted, with the value escalating depending on my absence period – or perhaps it’s a reflection of my guilt. Monetary substitutes come into play when struggling to rectify situations between my child and I. These transactions exemplify the concessions and flaws in my approach to love and parenting. It’s data at its most personal.
Our apprehension is often focused on what these platforms observe, yet it’s usually parents like me that actively seek this information. A comrade shared how, upon installing Revolut<18 for her offspring, it automatically synced up with her phone. This provides a comforting insight into their activities as they stop by the local shop on their way home from school.
This is referred to as "caring surveillance" by scholars in the media field. While surveillance capitalism underscoring the use of personal and location-centric data by platforms has been spotlighted, it's not just firms but parents and partners too that resort to privacy invasion. This issue magnifies as kids transition into adolescence. Although Revolut<18's feature allowing parents to monitor their children’s expenditures is advantageous from a safety standpoint, it also deprives teenagers of their spending independence. We likely all have certain transactions we'd have rather kept from our parents. My mom remaining oblivious to certain expenditures of my own is a preference I retain.
Rachel O’Dwyer is an established author and serves as a lecturer specialising in digital cultures at Dublin's National College of Art and Design.