Power, Privacy and Protecting Childhood in the Digital Age with Sarah Davies AM S9E9 (129)
🔥 If technology is free, who—and what—is paying the price?
🔥 Are we outsourcing our humanity in the name of convenience?
🎙️ Episode Summary
In this powerful and timely conversation, Louka Parry is joined by Sarah Davies, CEO of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation and Dolly’s Dream, to explore how technology, power, and purpose intersect in the lives of young people. Together, they confront the hidden harms of data extraction, dark patterns, and wellbeing bots, while also spotlighting the enduring resilience of childhood. From the dangers of cognitive offloading to the urgent need for data privacy reform, this episode challenges listeners to reclaim agency—as parents, educators, and citizens—and protect the relational heart of childhood in a rapidly digitising world.
👤 About Sarah Davies
Sarah Davies AM, Chief Executive Officer - Alannah & Madeline Foundation / Dolly's Dream
Sarah has had a wide-ranging career from executive roles in tertiary education to private sector consulting in Australia and overseas. For the last 20 years she has held leadership and executive positions in the charity and for-purpose sector. In 2021 Sarah joined the Alannah & Madeline Foundation as the CEO. The Foundation works to make sure children can grow up happy, safe and strong – in both their online and offline worlds, free from violence, and with the support and strategies they need to thrive.
Sarah also serves on a range of Boards and committees. Her current community Board roles include Chair of the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC) Advisory Board, and non-executive director of the Sisterhood Foundation, the Board of Old Parliament House, which manages the Museum of Australian Democracy, and Social Ventures Australia.
📘 Takeaways
Childhood is under attack, and cognition is at risk.
Technology has the potential to transform education positively.
The Alana and Madeleine Foundation aims to keep children safe from violence.
Understanding the risks of big tech is crucial for child safety.
Parents and educators must advocate for children's rights online.
Agency and self-efficacy are essential for children in the digital age.
Community engagement is vital for effective advocacy.
Data privacy is a significant concern in education technology.
We must recognize the duality of technology: both opportunities and risks.
Active participation in children's digital lives is necessary for their well-being.
📘 Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Context Setting
02:48 Learning and Insights from Experience
05:58 The Alana and Madeleine Foundation's Mission
08:46 The Impact of Technology on Children
11:52 The Duality of Technology: Opportunities and Risks
14:54 Cognitive Offloading and Human Skills
18:00 The Role of AI in Education and Wellbeing
20:43 Power Dynamics in Technology and Society
31:52 Exploring Agency in Learning
34:38 The Duality of Technology in Youth Development
36:48 Vulnerability and Relationships in the Digital Age
39:28 The Impact of Maltreatment on Children
41:19 The Relational vs. Transactional Approach in Education
43:35 Understanding Anger and Anxiety in Society
44:57 The Need for Human Consciousness Development
47:52 Taking Back Power in the Digital Space
49:38 Awareness and Responsibility in Education
54:51 The Role of eSafety in Protecting Children
59:38 Activating Agency and Advocacy for Change
🔗 Connect and Resources
🔗 Stay Connected with Louka Parry
For the latest learning innovation follow Louka on LinkedIn
Share your thoughts by visiting www.thelearningfuture.com
🎧 Tune in to be inspired, challenged, and reminded why love truly is at the heart of learning.
[Transcript Auto-generated]
Louka Parry (00:08)
Well, hello friends and welcome back to the learning future podcast. Today, our guest is a wonderful human being. Her name is Sarah Davies. She is the chief executive officer of the Alana and Madeleine foundation and Dolly's dream and full disclosure. I feel very lucky to sit on the board of this wonderful nonprofit doing nationally significant work across Australia. and as for Sarah, she has had a wide ranging career from executive roles in tertiary education to the private sector.
But for the last 20 years, she's held a range of different, really significant leadership and executive positions in the charity and the four purpose sectors. In 2021, she joined the Alana and Madeleine Foundation as the CEO. And the foundation works to make sure children can grow up happy, safe, and strong in both their online and offline worlds, free from violence, and with the support and strategies they need to thrive. She's a very busy human being. currently,
Well, she serves on a range of different boards and committees, including chair of the Australian Charities and Not-for-Profits Commission, the ACNC advisory board, and a non-executive director of the Sisterhood Foundation, the board of Old Parliament House, which manages the Museum of Australian Democracy. We're going to talk about that, Sarah, and Social Ventures Australia. So great to be chatting to you, Sarah.
Sarah Davies (01:20)
It's wonderful to be here Luca and I just want to say we are thrilled that you are on our board so please don't go anywhere in a hurry.
Louka Parry (01:27)
Well, you, mean, it was so funny how that came about as well. I'm with, I'm a first conversation we had over breakfast somewhere was just kind of an explosion of possibility and ideas. Um, and I think as people hear, uh, the way you see the world, found very inspiring. And in some ways it's also the reality that you also illuminate. And so maybe let's just start with that. Let's, let's talk first about something that you're learning from your unique vantage point in an ecosystem that you're going, Hmm.
Sarah Davies (01:29)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Louka Parry (01:55)
That's curious or your mental models being updated. You know, what's something you would start us off with?
Sarah Davies (01:59)
So I think learning to me falls in kind of different buckets.
So there's kind of technical or content learning. And I'm doing that like all day, every day in my job, right? Like all the time. I learn from my colleagues who are professional experts in their fields. I learn from absolutely the children and the young people in the families that we work with all the time. And I learn from trying to understand what the children and young people are telling us is concerning them or worrying them, trying to
Louka Parry (02:08)
Freelifically. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (02:28)
of work backwards to what some of those causal factors are. So I will be really honest in the last sort of few years I have gone down a bit of a tunnel, a dark tunnel about trying to understand the risks and harms presented to children from big tech predominantly and the more I learn and understand about the deliberate intentional design features
Louka Parry (02:44)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Sarah Davies (02:52)
And the motivations behind that, I guess, the more alarmed I get at how we are really going to have a crack at mitigating and reducing the risks and harms. So there's that kind of technical stuff, and that is constant. And I worry that, you know, I'm not kind of learning that fast enough and quick enough and in enough volume to kind of get ahead to think about how we then have a crack at it.
Louka Parry (03:04)
Yeah, yeah.
Mm-hmm.
Sarah Davies (03:15)
And then there's the constant kind of personal learning stuff. I've been around a while, I've worked for a long time, I've been in the sort of for-purpose space around positive youth development and positive futures for children and young people for a very long time, but always learning. And one of my colleagues here, Amy Johnson, who runs our development communications programs,
Louka Parry (03:32)
Mm.
Sarah Davies (03:37)
know, she says something that I just have to kind of make myself remember all the time, which is, you know, do you want to be right or do you want to be effective? And for me, in a leadership sense, like that for me is a constant learning question all the time. So, and we had a conversation about some tricky issues last week, particularly in Victoria, in Australia around the...
Louka Parry (03:46)
Wow.
Sarah Davies (04:02)
the awareness now of extensive alleged paedophile in early years services and how do you really affect reform? And particularly as we work in the change sector, sometimes it's easy to fall back on, but we've been telling you that for this long, we've been saying quality need, blah, So yeah, we were right, but actually we're not effective. So how do you play with that? ⁓
Louka Parry (04:22)
Yes. well. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (04:25)
And then just yesterday we had, we bring all of our staff from around the country together kind of three times a year in person to work on us and our plans and our goals and all that sort of stuff and our culture and our team. And we're currently working on our next sort of four year strategic map. And we've had three all staff workshops and yesterday we brought everybody together for sort of like the final design piece. And so this isn't a new learning, but it's a reinforcement
Louka Parry (04:43)
Mm.
Awesome.
Sarah Davies (04:54)
of something that fills me with confidence and hope each time I kind of get re-reminded of it. That if you have a good process and you trust the wisdom of crowds, you're gonna really probably come up with some pretty good stuff. Yeah.
Louka Parry (05:04)
Mmm.
There's a lot to delve into there that I want us to get to. there's a number of people aren't listening to this will be outside of Australia, Sarah. Can you just tell us the quick story of why the Ilana and Madeleine foundation exists and kind of the core of its work now and how that's changed?
Sarah Davies (05:17)
Yeah.
Sure. Yeah,
yeah. So in 1996, there was a really horrific and tragic mass shooting incident in Tasmania at a historical now tourist site called Port Arthur, where the perpetrator, a young man,
was able to procure multiple firearms. So handguns, semi-automatics, automatics. So I think he had up to 30 firearms. And as a single perpetrator, murdered 32 people and injured a whole bunch more. And amongst those that he murdered were Alana and Madeleine, two little girls, aged three and six, and their mother, Nanette.
And so Nanette's husband and Alana and Madeleine's father, Walter Mickack, obviously, like, I can't even begin to imagine what that would be like. But he is an extraordinary man and he...
Louka Parry (06:10)
Totally, yeah.
Sarah Davies (06:14)
basically took that experience and advocated for gun safety in Australia, which led to a world first national firearms agreement that is probably still one of the world's sort of safest firearms environments. I mean, it's constantly under threat and we can talk a bit about that if you want, but.
And then that emerged into a foundation in honor of his two daughters who would never grow up to make sure that other children could grow up free from violence and harm. So that's our origin story and actually still is the core of our work. And what's interesting is in the 29 years since...
I guess this is really kind of depressing really. Children are at great risk of violence and harm. What's changing is the environments and the stimulus and the triggers for that violence and harm. So whilst our core work is about keeping children safe and strong, the domains within which we have to work are obviously different because we need to go where the children and young people are and that's where the threats and risks are that we're trying to mitigate.
Louka Parry (07:07)
Mm.
I still find it astounding that what's been achieved through the work of this foundation and Walter's leadership and the letter he wrote to our prime minister, John Howard, saying, give you the courage to, I mean, it's just such an incredible example, I think, of leadership and I feel really honored to be part of this work. And I think the thing that I find just so powerful in all of it is
Sarah Davies (07:32)
you
Yes.
Louka Parry (07:45)
Like the spirit of childhood is so remarkable and in some ways resilient. Like children are just the most wonderful thing. and working in education that anybody that's listening to this that works with young people, when you slow down enough and kind of take all the busyness off the table, you go like, gosh, there's just so much delight and sometimes spontaneity and just random things children say, they, cut through our adult.
Sarah Davies (07:52)
Yeah, absolutely.
Louka Parry (08:10)
professional veneer sometimes, it's just, just the laughter that's possible. It's so on a tough day, you know, going down and, seeing kindergarten age children playing and the way the wonder and all this. So that, that I think is something to hold onto. That's for me is the, is the bright light, right? Of the future and the capability. Take us on a journey now in terms of what you're noticing in the, as you're saying, the environment's changed. Every teacher, every parent knows this. We've got.
Sarah Davies (08:12)
Absolutely.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah.
yet.
Louka Parry (08:37)
Lots of work coming out. The Anxious Generation from Jonathan Hyde is one seminal book that I think is kind of at the forefront of that movement. What do we know about technology now, Sarah, and how children are being, I'll use this word deliberately, exploited by dark patterns and for the misaligned incentives?
Sarah Davies (08:50)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I think that there are two different worlds to technology.
So, I mean, as an organization, we are tech positive, right? So let's start in the world that is about opportunity, change. And the thing that excites me most about technology, having worked in the sort of the social change space for decades, technology really does have the capability to transform some of those patterns around exclusion and disadvantage and vulnerability that we've never
ever really been able to crack. Right? So there is this element to it that is so exciting. And when we think, for example, about EdTech in schools and what and the possibility of every child having a genuinely personalized learning
environment crafted and created for them to bring out their strengths, their passions, their interests, to help them build all of those kind of pedagogical and learning and curiosity muscles in whatever way excites them and helps them find their futures through that. Like that's something we've never been able to truly do before. And the capacity then to do that at scale. So for every child,
Louka Parry (10:10)
Mmm.
Sarah Davies (10:11)
That's
so exciting. So I do genuinely believe that we are on the cusp of an extraordinary opportunity with Tech for Good in the right way, with the right intent and good design and strong human intervention and oversight and management and leadership.
Louka Parry (10:28)
Mmm,
beautiful.
Sarah Davies (10:29)
On
the other side though, I do think we've been the boiling frog for 20 or 30 years. This hasn't just happened today or in the last five years or the last 10 years. We have absolutely been in that pot 30 years ago when the flame got lit underneath it and we are now boiling. And I think I don't.
Louka Parry (10:47)
Mmm.
Sarah Davies (10:49)
I mean, look, I work in a space where you come across some really vile people, but I don't believe that most people are bad. I think most people are pretty good. And so I don't think that the original intent and design of what we're living with now was people saying, waking up in the morning, going, let's design stuff that's going to hurt kids. I don't think that. I think we've now got to such a stage, of capitalist financial growth.
that the curiosity within that sphere has just been, I suppose, limited to a lens that is really around profit and commercialization. And that's driving significant harms. And I would agree with you. I think that big tech is utterly abusing children.
And one of the things that I've really struggled with in the last couple of years is to kind of try and actually understand why and how and then get other people to care about it. And you know, we do a lot of work with teachers in schools and parents and when we talk to them, there is absolutely no awareness of the design features in big tech that cause such risk.
But when we start talking about what they are, they're not, the words aren't particularly sexy or dramatic. They're things like data and privacy and algorithms and predictive analytics and profiling. And people tend to kind of roll their eyes and head for the door when you talk about that. But actually we've really got to encourage people to almost kind of go on the same journey I've been on to really unpack it and understand it because only then,
Louka Parry (11:59)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (12:19)
can we really start to be clever about addressing the risks and the harms? So for example, it was...
Louka Parry (12:24)
Mmm.
Sarah Davies (12:26)
exposed last week or the week before that Meta, so Facebook amongst many of its other platforms, has kind of changed its T's and C's. So if you want to be able to upload photographs from your camera reel onto your Facebook page to share with family and friends or whatever it happens to be, the T's and C's now say in order to do that, what you're actually doing is you're giving them access to every single
single photo all the time on your camera reel, regardless of how privately you think those photos might be stored. For use in their AI, ongoing. Now, like, I'm probably not allowed to swear on air, but I really, really want to. Like, that is outrageous! Like, no! You can't do that! But they can. So...
Louka Parry (13:00)
Wow.
for the training data or something like that.
You can't, can't if you're onesie, sir. That is crazy. Yeah. Wow.
Sarah Davies (13:18)
So I think, yeah, that's a space that I think has a real duality to it. yeah, how do we make sure we deal with the root causes of the risks and harms rather than just kind of responding to the symptoms? But how do we actually, so the big question that I'm trying to work out and get other people to kind of...
Louka Parry (13:37)
Hmm.
Sarah Davies (13:39)
want to resolve or want to fix is how do we help big tech change their business model? Because essentially, we are their money, right? And what I would say to anybody listening is if a digital product is free, be aware, be alarmed and be aware. It is not. We are the cost at huge cost, particularly to children and young people and to vulnerable adults as well.
Louka Parry (13:45)
Mmm.
Yes.
Sarah Davies (14:03)
So how do we help shift their business model so that we are no longer their profit, but actually we can still invest then in that first world that I talked about, which is where there is real opportunity to create breakthrough positive change at scale.
Louka Parry (14:14)
Mmm.
Yeah, there's so much in that. I love this kind of the paradox of technology today or the worlds, the dual, the duality of the worlds of technology. And, and as, as you say, you know, you hear technologists talk and they always talk about accessibility and inclusion and this is the potential is this, but it's as if somehow the model has meant that the pitfalls have actually never got us to the
potential, you know, and I, you know, I look at the data as well and read a lot about what happens to especially cognition. very interested in how our thinking processes or even our executive function area of our brain is being impacted by these kinds of technologies. Because of course that implies learning and resilience and a whole other suite of decision making. Sarah, you know, we spoke with Martin Westwell.
Sarah Davies (14:56)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yep, exactly.
Louka Parry (15:08)
who runs the South Australian Department of Education on this season. And he was just talking about, you know, like the competencies, the capabilities to think well, to choose well, you know, all that stuff instead of the call it the comfort crisis, you know, or the user centered design eventually takes away all your choices. Because you've told it to, or you've allowed it to, and then you don't run anything, you don't choose anything. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (15:15)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Yeah. Yes. That's right. Yes. And it's seductive, right? It's seductive
to outsource thinking. It's seductive to outsource the mental load of running a family, know, the challenges of work, whatever it happens to be. But I heard this beautiful expression and I don't know, like...
who crafted it, I think it's so powerful. The better machines are at being machines, the better humans need to be at being human. So actually we have got to value and hang onto our capacity to think and to face that mental load challenge and the complexity challenge and not outsource our thinking and our reasoning and our cognitive skills.
Louka Parry (15:56)
Absolutely.
I've heard, I'm attributing it to Andrea Schleicher, who's the head of education and skills at the OECD. And he has a great saying that I've heard him speak about, which is that the challenge of education is to ensure that we create first class human beings, not second class robots. Cause if you're doing anything that can be kind of automated or all that kind of stuff, well, already we're seeing generative AI tools and now agentric AI, which we're entering the era of able to
Sarah Davies (16:27)
Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That's right.
Absolutely.
Louka Parry (16:38)
outperform us in narrow intelligence tasks. And crazily, Sarah, and you may have seen this too, but I've read a few papers where, know, LLMs, large language models have passed the Turing test. They did so quite a while ago, but they've done so now in a way where actually they outperform human beings at being perceived as human. So even when you're chatting with somebody, the participants of the studies will rate the AI.
Sarah Davies (16:40)
Yes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Louka Parry (17:02)
as quote more human than the actual human. And you wonder about the social skill atrophy that's going to come through this, through this.
Sarah Davies (17:07)
Yeah, that's right. All
of that. So let's, can we play with that for a minute, Luca? Because I've been thinking obviously a lot about this. And, you know, it's a bit like my children's ability now to read a map. Well, they can't because they've got apps. And it's the same thing with our human skills. We outsource it, we'll lose the muscle.
Louka Parry (17:15)
Let's do it.
Mmm. Mmm.
Sarah Davies (17:32)
So just thinking about this agentic AI, you use the term that they outperform us. I'd really challenge that outperform bit. I think they seduce, right? And I think what they do is they're like a sugar hit. They feed the elements in us that are the first set of receptors to feeling good. What they don't do is get into...
the real, meaningful, fundamental sense of us. And we've seen this, we're seeing this now, I think, hopefully, to such an extent that we should be having alarm bells going off every frickin' where. So, you we've had the case in the US where a young man tragically took his own life, incited to do so by a character AI, chatbot companion friend, and his mother, and thank God for her bravery.
and her tenacity persisted so that she could get the transcripts of that and was able to go to court to sue character AI. the court and the defense, one of the defenses against not being liable was freedom of speech. Now the court very sensibly said, no, AI doesn't have, a bot doesn't have the right to freedom of speech. But this is, this is starting to happen.
Louka Parry (18:36)
Sovereignty. Interesting.
Sarah Davies (18:40)
And I was at the Australian EdTech conference in Sydney a few weeks ago and was really grateful to get an opportunity to talk to people about EdTech and data privacy and children and all that kind of stuff. But what was fascinating to me is there were at least a dozen vendors there selling into primary and secondary schools, wellbeing bots. So we know there is a
Louka Parry (18:40)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (19:03)
crisis around wellbeing and young people. And we know the power of the, what tech can give us is scalability, affordable scalability. So we know we have a huge crisis in, we don't have enough sites, we don't have enough social workers, we don't have enough wellbeing professionals to nurture and support and encourage our young people as they grow up and work through all these challenges.
So the seduction of having a scalable push button model that puts wellbeing bots into schools, I can understand. But what are we doing? It's that first level of sugar hit to an it's yeah, I think that we've, my God, we've got so much to do.
Louka Parry (19:42)
Hmm.
I really take your point about framing something as performance. I'm really curious about even the concept of productivity in this same setting, Sarah. And I think to bring those two worlds together, on the one hand...
Sarah Davies (19:56)
Yes.
Yes. Yes.
Louka Parry (20:05)
I think this is one of the challenges we see and I see in our work across systems, Is we have young people using assistants for learning. Now the problem with using an assistant is what we now understand as cognitive offloading or cognitive debt, which is I don't actually need to grapple and do the thinking, which is literally the neurobiological process of learning. Because actually the AI is doing the learning and then I just get the product.
Now the challenge with that of course is we don't need is this assistant model. What we need is a tutor model that has very clear guide rails or guidelines, ⁓ guidance and governance, right? The three G's that I've heard, which I quite like. so that's because otherwise, the point is it's kind of like it's a design decision somewhere that's made somewhere, Sarah, which is either I'm going to.
Sarah Davies (20:36)
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Louka Parry (20:52)
I'm either offloading and that's the kind of the user centered convenience pain point, et cetera, just get everything else to do. then, but what am I freeing myself up to do? You know what I mean? Like, that's why I think my preferred future of course is one where technology augments and nudges towards deeper human connection. And as you say, when the number one use case for general AI today is
Sarah Davies (21:01)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Louka Parry (21:20)
companionship slash therapy. Number one use case in the HBR article from April 9th that we got to stop and go like, okay, well, this is this in service of human flourishing and connectedness or is this actually kind of a breakdown of it? And you know, then you have all these really problematic attachments and you see that, you know, saw a video of a man that proposed to his AI in the US and the acid. Yes. And now he's really ecstatic and he's married with kids.
Sarah Davies (21:42)
Yep.
Louka Parry (21:46)
And you just think, this is kind of, it's almost like we're in sci-fi.
Sarah Davies (21:47)
Yeah, yeah.
Absolutely.
Yeah, and I think so coming back to that one of the things I Wouldn't mind having a chat about and look this is my ideology coming out right now and loads of people are going to disagree with me and that's fine right because it's in it's in it's wrestling with ideas and views and assumptions that we find Ways forward to something better, but I just want to talk about power too. So You know
Louka Parry (22:01)
Sure. Own your bias there. great. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (22:17)
I understand that there is a pitch deck going around at the moment from Metta looking for big end of town investors in their AI business. And in the pitch deck, they talk about the market opportunities that they are pursuing. And they quote some research that says that children generally like to have
Louka Parry (22:34)
Right.
Sarah Davies (22:41)
between 12 and 15 friends, right? That's how many friends children kind of say would be the right kind of number. But that children are reporting that they really only have three or four friends. And so that gap, right? That gap, they are saying there's our market opportunity for AI friends. So that's the pitch. The pitch...
have no words. And so when I think about power, there's this beautiful expression that I think power is a bit like manure. If you pile it all up in one place, it tends to stink. But if you spread it around, it can do a lot of good. And this is where I think we have to take back power. We have, for whatever reason,
unaware, boiling frog, laziness, outsourced thinking, all that kind of stuff. We have given away our power as consumers of these services and products. We need to take it back.
Louka Parry (23:31)
That's so interesting. I mean, it's interesting when you think about power, Sarah, and its connection to agency and self-efficacy, self-concept. And so this idea that you end up in some ways power, I mean, even the learned helplessness research that, that Martin Seligman did decades ago, you know, when you think eventually the cage, you're in the cage, the door is open, but you just are in the cage.
Sarah Davies (23:40)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yeah.
Yeah,
yeah, that's Exactly. Exactly. It's a bit like working in an organisation and there are organisation policies and procedures and some of them are really dumb and you know, actually, we can change them. There are policies, we can change our own rules.
Louka Parry (23:55)
Cause you don't, you've forgotten your agency to stand up and walk outside.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. There's, I'm just on that. I mean, I wish I was surprised by that kind of approach, you know, like here's the market opportunity. Even that language is so, it makes my skin crawl a little. yeah. Cause there's something about, just the complete absence of, of humanness or humanity in that.
Sarah Davies (24:23)
vomit.
human. Where's
where's the person in those in that, you even the person that is physically typing that into a into a deck, where's the anyway? Yeah. So we
Louka Parry (24:39)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's kind of,
mean, you the joke that we're really having a crack at big tech today. It's good. ⁓ do know when you think about users and they have, when they call it, well, these are our users and that's a, that's a language of technology, but it's dehumanized. Of course, the only other, the other famous industry that calls their customers users is the drug industry because you're a So it's kind of just an interesting addictive. Yes. The addictive nature of it. I, on this piece on power.
Sarah Davies (24:44)
Yeah.
dehumanized.
Yes, that's right. Well, there's a strong analogy between that.
Louka Parry (25:05)
I'm really interested and we have a thing called the learning future alphabet. don't know if I've ever spoken to you about, but these, these are the principles that we think underpin like environment, thriving environments for learning in the future and the, and our A is agency. And in some ways I'm very interested in what I might call remembered agency. Cause I don't, I think, you know, when we're endowed with a life force, we're born as this small child, the child just explores the world. They don't, they're not asking for permission.
Sarah Davies (25:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes.
Louka Parry (25:33)
They're just, oh, what's that over there going on this way? have to watch them and make sure that, know, give them a nice container.
Sarah Davies (25:33)
No. Yeah. Exactly. That looked interesting. Let's put that in my mouth.
Louka Parry (25:41)
Exactly. Oh, and then there's something about kind of the, I think the institutionalization on the industrialization of ourselves as living beings to become part of a system or a society. And there's value in that. But of course, I think what we forget is we end up going
into the social and I think this is the issue as well with adolescents is that they are so attuned to social esteem. You know, it's kind of the becoming during the process of becoming so rather than saying, I know who I am. They're like, it's exploratory as it should be because it's human development.
Sarah Davies (26:13)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And also,
like, I don't know about you, but I remember being an adolescent. And I remember thinking, enjoying different environments where I could try on different selves. Like, I remember so clearly working one summer in the south of France in a summer camp, teaching sailing and all that kind of stuff. And I can remember saying, right, this summer, I am actually going to...
try out a whole heap of other elements of my personality or what I think is in me, just to see how they fit because nobody knows me and it kind of doesn't. I mean it's so important to have those different spaces to try that out. And again this is the...
Louka Parry (26:43)
Mmm.
Sarah Davies (26:54)
This is the duality of the tech world because actually what tech gives young people is some of those spaces to experiment and try out different cells and different parts of themselves and what feels more authentic to them and fulfilling to them and what doesn't. So there's this constant, it's terrific and it's shit. Sorry, that's not very technical but.
Louka Parry (27:01)
Mmm.
No, I think it's
paradox of this moment. mean, honestly, I think most educators would not their heads. That's what a day feels like when you educate too. It feels terrific. It also feels deeply depressing because you you see the impacts on the development. I just like the life force. I really like that idea, you know, the spirit of a young person.
Sarah Davies (27:25)
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Yep.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But Luca, what's interesting though is that still the most vulnerable children offline are still the most vulnerable children online. know, Marty Seligman talks about inoculation or immunization against anxiety and depression and the POS-Ed kind of principles.
Louka Parry (27:42)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (27:58)
There is emerging evidence of inoculation in a similar way against some of the risks and harms of tech.
It is not going to be surprising to anybody. It is a strong family environment. It is open, regular, authentic, vulnerable communication with family. We work with children and young people every single day and they all tell us that actually they want to be able to talk to their parents about what worries them. They want to.
Louka Parry (28:05)
Mmm.
Sarah Davies (28:25)
They value a strong family environment. They value their friends. We're doing some research at the moment with primary school children and their parents around their expectations around data privacy. So this is part of our kind of advocacy work to kind of change the rules of the game around it. And they know exactly what's good for them. They know exactly what they want.
Louka Parry (28:42)
Mmm.
Sarah Davies (28:46)
So, you know, those core human rights, those core children rights about being safe, being heard, participating in decisions that affect them, having systems and services that are designed for their benefit and for their flourishing, good human relationships, it's all relational. none of that has changed.
Louka Parry (29:07)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (29:07)
And so I don't want people to feel despondent because the, you know, if you went back and read a parenting handbook from 50 years ago that talked about how to raise healthy kids, it's the same. I think where we have a real challenge in the digital space is that,
Louka Parry (29:16)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (29:26)
and maybe in living generational history, not older history, but living generational history, I don't think we've had a time before where the world that children live in, adults didn't grow up in, and so really don't have an experiential frame of reference. So we really don't get it, and we don't.
And so what we hear from children and young people is they really want to talk to their parents about what's in their worry box. But their parents don't get it. And so their parents are likely to be protective, which absolutely, as I am as a parent, of course we are. But that's not, I don't think the...
The best way, the best way is not the lock it down, no devices, stay off it, stay away, fence at the top of the cliff. It's really about, we have to make ourselves uncomfortable and go and live in their world with them side by side so that we start to experience what they're experience, the good and then the shadow side and build that connection, I think.
Louka Parry (30:17)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (30:25)
because when we look at children's vulnerability, and this is something that I swear I just don't understand how we haven't improved, like how we haven't actually changed this. So there was some research released in 2023 called the Australian Child Mouth Treatment Study.
And it shows that, you know, over 60 % of children today experience some form of maltreatment. So that that might be neglect, emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse. mean, we're like, we're talking pretty, like, how are we? How are we still thinking that that's okay to accept with children? And I and that's globally very high, like
Louka Parry (31:09)
Yes.
Sarah Davies (31:10)
There aren't exactly replicable studies in other parts of the world, from what data is available, that is unusually high. So what are we doing? What are we? So yes, that tech stuff is massive, but we've got to come back to the beginning, which is relationships and environments and experiences that see children for who they are and where they are.
Louka Parry (31:18)
Mmm.
Wow.
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (31:32)
and supports and nurtures that.
Louka Parry (31:34)
I feel like when I found out about that study and I found out about it through my role at the AMF, course, Sarah, I was through the author in the session that we put together, I was just astounded, frankly, that that's the reality that more than one in two children are maltreated. And I just wonder about the constructs, what needs to happen to community to enable to stop that?
Sarah Davies (31:41)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (31:59)
from taking place. mean, I think there's a whole suite of work to be done specifically with men and in the men's workspace and emotional intelligence. I think that's clearly part of it. But there's also this piece around just remembering the relational instead of the transactional. And I think this we've kind of swapped those out somehow, or they've been swapped out through incentives. So we transact or it's transmission. And I talk a lot about this in schools too Sarah, which, you know, if all we're doing is transacting and transmitting,
Sarah Davies (32:04)
Yeah.
Yes. Yes.
Louka Parry (32:26)
you know, kind of explicit stuff or content stuff.
Sarah Davies (32:29)
Then we can't
force that to machines, right? Because it's transactional. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Louka Parry (32:31)
Yeah, 100 % you can totally get that stuff over there. And I think that's the piece we're we're
kind of forgetting we're outsourcing the relational. No, no, no, no, no. That's all we must. Like in this whole world that's always changing, etc, etc. What should never change that we relate to each other we I am because we are Ubuntu, you know, this, this idea that the fabric is what makes life viable, let alone worth living.
Sarah Davies (32:39)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (32:59)
And so
I just, have deep concerns about how we are saying, we'll push the relational over there so that we can transact better. It's pushed the transaction over there so we can relate better. It just, I, I, I'm still a bit astounded by it. think frankly, the approach of some systems and some corners of society that say, well, this is what matters most. You think, well, that's not what matters most at all. What matters most. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (33:04)
Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No. So then
that makes me think or ask, like, what do we value? You know, I think it's fascinating that we've seen in Australia anyway, some campaigns in the last few years around reminding consumers that people who work in retail outlets are people, not transactional, right? So we've seen these ads about
Louka Parry (33:27)
Mm.
Mm.
Sarah Davies (33:44)
Don't shout at them, don't be rude to the other person. That's right, exactly. So we're having to be reminded that the person we are physically in front of and talking to is a human being. they're like, so what are our...
Louka Parry (33:46)
Yes. You see the signs as well now, Sarah, sometimes when you go into places. Interesting. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (33:58)
as a whole community and society, what's that value about being human and what's driving that behavior? And this is a little tangent, but it's it's in my head. I was driving to work this morning and I was listening to the radio and there was a news piece about one of the coaches in one of Australia's sort of premier league football teams. So not soccer, Australian rules.
Louka Parry (34:03)
Yes.
Yeah, please.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (34:23)
has been receiving what police are now calling credible threats, right? Because his team isn't doing particularly well this season. And I'm just like, what is it that makes us kind of want to put our anger somewhere? Like, so I'm thinking about, who's making those threats, right? Why is somebody...
Louka Parry (34:37)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (34:41)
writing or whatever they're doing, communicating with this particular sports coach, saying, I'm gonna hurt you, or I'm gonna kill you, or I'm gonna hurt your family because the team's not doing very well. Like, what's happened to that person that there is so much anger?
that that's where they need to put it. And then if we think about what, you know, Jonathan Haight said in his book about the rise of online bullying and this whole kind of binary, you're with me or you're against me, there's nothing in the middle. What's happened to us that we are so angry or anxious that we have to have an outlet for it? Like we have to pile it on someone else.
Louka Parry (35:03)
Mmm.
Hmm
my gosh, need to part two, Sarah. I often feel this way. Because that really is, I think, the core question at the center of our humanity right now. And for me, the thing that I've come, I think, to sit with at this point is we have this exponential growth curve in computational power, right? That's Moore's law. It's been going for a century plus. What we haven't got
Sarah Davies (35:19)
Hahaha
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Louka Parry (35:41)
is an exponential curve in human consciousness or adult development. so I think really quite deeply about development in all its forms as an educator, know, a futurist. And I just, I look at some of the work around it. We often think that, your development, you're 18, great, you're an adult. The brain continues to develop or not. So to your point, and so for me, and this is I say with Martin West all the time, it's executive function for the win.
Sarah Davies (35:49)
Yes, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (36:09)
self-regulation is core. The issue there is that it's just blatant transference we would talk about in psychology or projection. I'm projecting my unhappiness onto another human being because it makes my ego feel better.
Sarah Davies (36:21)
Yeah, and it's a relief
of some sort of what's sitting in me that is uncomfortable or painful, yeah. ⁓
Louka Parry (36:26)
Yeah, it's literally honestly,
it's kind of like, though, I I call it healing, which like, there's not enough, we can't talk about healing enough, I think. But the point is, intergenerational trauma is real. We understand that maltreatment is well documented. So the question is, well, what kind of social systems are we creating that enable people to help process these things in healthy ways? Why again, for me, it's psychophysiology. I'm really deep in that.
Sarah Davies (36:31)
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah.
Yes, yes, epigenetics is really clear.
Yeah.
Louka Parry (36:52)
that hole at the moment, you know, BQ body quotient, interoceptive capability. Do I understand how I feel in my body? And so many people have disembodied completely, Sarah. And I think big tech also contribute to that. So you just walk around, forget the body.
Sarah Davies (37:02)
Yeah.
Yeah, because they're also defining
for us what a good body looks like. So that's like, what the?
Louka Parry (37:11)
well, that's the whole other piece. Well,
that's something that I learned recently too about, I don't know if you heard this, the algorithm would notice when a young girl had deleted multiple selfies. And so because of that, would then deliver because they, what they realized is that self-esteem was an issue at that point in time. So then they deliver a particular.
Sarah Davies (37:24)
Yep.
Yeah.
That's right. Yeah, psychological profiling, predictive analytics drives the
algorithm content then that goes straight to the wound, straight into the wound.
Louka Parry (37:37)
That's right. Straight to the wound.
then, and you wonder why Gen Z, and I think this is slightly unfair, but you you hear people talk about the elements of narcissism that are prevalent in that generation. Not, not due to their own fault, but because of the design features of these, these platforms that they have effectively grown up and developed their own self-concept through. I think, I think Sarah, me, it's, need to imagine if we were.
Here's the scenario for you. Imagine if we were to invest the same amount of time, energy, attention, finances into the development of human consciousness instead of here's a new platform. And this is why I'm no longer the techno optimist I used to be, which was, ⁓ I will just build the platform and they will come the point until because the incentives are misaligned, follow the incentives and you follow the money. So now it's like.
Sarah Davies (38:12)
Absolutely.
right.
Yeah.
Totally, totally. And the money
is data, right? It's our biological data, it's our neurological data, it's our psychological data. It's no luck. They've got our demographic data. They've got all of that. They've had it for years. It's now our human data. And it is used against us. It is fed into wounds that they know that we have. It's absolutely insidious. It's evil. we can...
Louka Parry (38:29)
Yes, that's the currency.
Yes.
Yes.
Sarah Davies (38:50)
Stop it. If we want to, we can put in place regulations and rules that say if you want to play in the Australian marketplace and if you want Australian customers, these are the minimum standards that you have to, you have to meet. And if you don't meet them, you can't come in. You can't play in this market. Now that takes balls. It takes money. It takes consumer advocacy to say this is what we expect.
Louka Parry (39:13)
Yes.
Sarah Davies (39:16)
We can do that. That's what I mean though. We have got to take back this power. And I also would posit to all of those who are investing in big tech, freaking don't. Don't invest unless you can see that there is safety by design, there is age appropriate design, there is privacy by default.
Louka Parry (39:19)
Mm.
Sarah Davies (39:32)
Like we don't invest in tobacco anymore because we know it kills us. Well, this is doing the same to our young people. So all the people that are pumping the capital in, the fuel in to grow the industry, fricking wake up and look at what you're investing in and make demands as investors about how it needs to be done.
Louka Parry (39:38)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (39:50)
So this is where, this is this, let's not have a big steaming pile of manure, right? Let's take back our bits of power as consumers, as investors, as voters, and actually say we need this to change.
Louka Parry (39:56)
Yeah.
Mm.
So I wanted to talk about, stay on this action line of inquiry, because I feel like there is the national work or international work and I do feel say thank you to you and your colleagues for helping lead that work. It inspires me and many people I know. What can be done at the school level if you're an educator and what should we think about as parents at the individual level? Where would we point them?
Sarah Davies (40:27)
So I think the single biggest issue is lack of awareness and understanding about the implications of some of the products and services that we're using. So I know it's boring, but we have to understand what data is collected and who gets it. And I'll give you a couple of examples. I mean, my daughter's a teacher.
I think it is an extraordinary profession filled by really generous, awesome people, but it is also really hard to be in at the moment. So there is an overwhelm.
everything's your responsibility. And so when products come along that say they're free and they're easy and they solve a problem that you have, engagement, learning challenges, all that kind of stuff, you grab it. Nothing is free. So think about the cost of actually what you're paying. And so one of the things that I've done in the last year is I've tried to understand in the education space.
where student data is staying and where it's going. Now we know that the big environmental platforms, Google Classroom, Microsoft, all of the others, we know that they take all of the data. And in fact, only a couple of months ago, it was revealed in New South Wales that Microsoft has been taking children's bio data from all the New South Wales public schools and nobody knew, right?
Louka Parry (41:26)
Hmm.
Wow. Right.
Sarah Davies (41:46)
So I've been trying to work with Australian EdTech to sort of try and understand where they're coming from because I was saying, well, you you guys sell the data and you and they're going, no, no, no, we don't, we don't. We have a license agreement, we sell our products into school. Of course we don't sell student data. No, no, no, we're really for student privacy. And I'm like, well, how can that be when I know that data from your system has ended up over here in a LLM training model or being profiled or sold to a data broker over here?
And what I've discovered is actually even Australian EdTech providers don't know. So I had a conversation with one provider who has a fabulous learning product, really terrific. Had this conversation with him and he went, of course we don't leak data. Comes back two weeks later, actually I didn't realise a third party plugin that I use in my tech stack has been leaking data. So it's...
It can feel overwhelming, but all I would say is if it's free, it should have a big warning sticker on it at what cost. so just really understand the whole implications of using tech in schools and in the classrooms and in the home. So.
Louka Parry (42:43)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Hmm.
Sarah Davies (42:55)
You know, one of the things that really struck me kind of made my stomach cramp a little bit reading this sort of early research from this research we're doing with primary school parents and children.
is, you know, some of the parents have said, well, look, cost of living's tough, it's hard, we can't afford many of the kind of extracurricular, hobby type activities we've had to cut back. So free tech, free entertainment, free games. You know, it's just like, I nearly swore then, sorry, but like.
So just, think, and this is a huge, this should not be teacher's responsibility, I don't think. I don't think the teacher should be responsible for understanding how each product they want to use or need to use in the classroom does this. And it's actually not even the school's responsibility, it's a system responsibility. So teachers and school leaders absolutely lobby the state education system and the federal education system to say you need to set minimum rules of the game around data privacy and safety.
Louka Parry (43:33)
Yeah, nice.
systems responsibly.
Sarah Davies (43:53)
and if the products don't meet that, then they're not on our menu for consideration for use in our classrooms. So I think there's that. Look, I'm not a teacher, I'm not a pedagogical expert. I mean, I learn a lot from my daughter who's a primary school teacher and from my mother who's a teacher and we have teachers in our organization.
Louka Parry (44:01)
Mm.
Yeah. I've learned a lot from you, Sarah. That's good.
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (44:16)
You know, I listened to my daughter, she had a bit of a debrief the other day. Her school has sort of changed how they do individual learning plans and they now, the school has now said you only have to do an individual learning plan if a child is sort of formally registered with needing explicit help.
And she's absolutely furious because she's saying, they all need individualized learning plans. And I'm going to do it anyway, she says. it's like, so look, I can't tell teachers how to be good teachers. They know that a million times better than me.
Louka Parry (44:38)
this route.
Give us a final two questions. First is just talk about some of the work that we do with the commission, the eSafety Commission. Part of it is really just knowing. The knowing gap is the first thing. If you don't know, once you know, then it's like, how do I act? So tell us a bit about that work.
Sarah Davies (44:53)
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. That's absolutely... Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
So look, we in Australia, think our single biggest asset in Australia about keeping children safe online is our e-safety commissioner. She is a flipping rock star on steroids. She is brave, she is smart, she has worked in tech, she knows what she's doing. Can I say she's having a pretty shit time because she's a threat to some of these powerful drivers.
Louka Parry (45:28)
Mmm. Yeah.
Sarah Davies (45:30)
But so we work really closely with the eSafety Commission. They are somewhat limited in their scope because they are defined by an Act of Parliament. And when the first online safety act sort of was passed under the then coalition government, it was one of the first in the world. It was really breakthrough. It's really sad to say we've stalled. Like we need a lot of catch up.
So there's been a review of the Safety Act, there are a review of the Code, like all of that's happening. One of the things that I think is really interesting is as the Commission, what they need to take to government as the entity that makes the rules and the laws is what are community expectations. And if the community isn't aware of the issues and therefore doesn't understand them,
the community then can't have realistic expectations about what needs addressing. So therefore the community is pretty silent on this. But actually, this is what I mean, if we get in there and understand and start to advocate for our children and our students and us about how actually we expect tech to work.
and what rights we expect them to uphold, not abuse, then it gives more power to the Commission and to other Commissions to say, here are the community expectations. they haven't, our power hasn't been taken away. We have got to re-charge it.
Louka Parry (46:52)
We've forgotten about it.
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (46:53)
We've got to bring it back and use it. We have agency. Like we may not have practiced it in this space, but this is our opportunity. The other thing that I think right now is such an opportunity is in December last year, the government put through the first suite of reforms to our Privacy Act. So our Privacy Act, I think, was written in 1988. So that's when in classrooms we were still using kind of all my chalkboards and slate, right?
Louka Parry (47:18)
Yeah, totally. 88, wow.
Sarah Davies (47:20)
So but, that those are the privacy rules that are governing the now. Right. So the first suite of reforms went through and in those reforms was an agreement to set up an online children's privacy code. Now that opportunity that is a massive opportunity for us to start to set the rules of the game for tech in terms of children's data privacy because actually educational data.
Louka Parry (47:24)
Wow, interesting.
Sarah Davies (47:46)
pretty much all children at some point go to school. So it is the biggest collector of our children's data. So if we can influence the design of that code to be private by default, safe by design, age-appropriate design, what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut off a lot of the fuel channels that drive the risks and harms. Now that code is being designed now.
The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, OAIC, is currently running a public consultation right now for anyone in Australia to talk about what they expect for children's data privacy.
And this is Mark, this is the challenge that I have because I don't think teachers and parents, we don't understand that it's the data that is the driver of the predictive analytics, the algorithms and therefore the risks that go straight to the wounds, right? So right now, Google OAIC, get your views in, just even if it's just an email that says we expect all data to be private, like it just has to be that simple.
Louka Parry (48:36)
a lot of the other impacts. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
I just have actually.
Wow. Sarah, it's just an absolute delight. You are working across so many different pieces. I want to ask you a final question because we've covered kind of the story of the org, technology, dark patterns, incentives, maltreatment, data privacy, EdTech agency. What do you want to leave us with? Kind of in our minds.
Sarah Davies (49:04)
Yeah. Yeah.
⁓
I think that we have agency, right? We can look at all of this and go, how dreadful and do nothing. We can look at all of this and go, makes me feel uncomfortable, need to learn a bit more.
When you learn a bit more, I might activate that learning into some action. If that action is sitting down with your child at home and playing a game to really understand, that's a great action. If that action is sending an email to the Office of the Information Privacy Commissioner and saying, expect all children's data to be private, that's a great action. If the action is writing to your MP and saying, seriously, pick your socks up, lift, get this done, it's at every level. So I think be active, be curious,
Louka Parry (49:27)
Yeah.
Sarah Davies (49:47)
understand and particularly with tech, this is not where we grew up as adults. So participate and play with your kids. I was at a forum last year or the year before and there was a young man there, a 16 year old who said, participate and play, don't just police. So we have to kind of get over our instinctive protective factor and actually get in there and share the experience.
Louka Parry (50:04)
on.
Sarah Davies (50:10)
And I think be conscious consumers because this is us too, right? I mean, we're a children's charity. That's what I'm fighting for. But actually, this is about us. We need to know what we're doing, what we're giving away and at what cost to us. And yeah, be aware. Anything that is free is not it may not cost you money out of your wallet, but it is costing you a lot more. And use your voice. Ask questions. Be curious. Advocate.
activate ourselves.
Louka Parry (50:36)
Sarah, you're just such a fantastic guest for a podcast called The Learning Future, which is all about how continuing to learn across the course of our lives. But look, thank you so much for joining us. And beyond that, thank you for the entire, like the tireless effort you put in for this work and just how you advocate for the rights of children. It's deeply inspiring and deeply needed. So thank you.
Sarah Davies (50:43)
Sure.
Thank
you, Luca. I feel very privileged. I love what I do and I do it. I don't do anything I don't want to do. I've gotten to that age and stage. I only do what matters to me. This really matters to me. I work with extraordinary people and I believe that we can create the change we want to see.
Louka Parry (51:06)
That's great.
