Most school online surveillance monitors student activity in and away from school, UCSD study says

In the past decade, schools have adopted online surveillance as what they call a means to protect students from violence and cyberbullying by alerting administrators to troubling behavior. But exactly how much and in what ways student activity is monitored varies from platform to platform.

Of the 14 prominent school-based online surveillance companies, the vast majority allow school administrators access to students’ digital use beyond typical school hours and many on personal devices, according to a new study by researchers at UC San Diego Health in La Jolla.

Among the findings reported in a paper published last month in the Journal of Medical Internet Research:

• 93% of companies keep track of school-issued devices, while 36% say they monitor student-owned phones and computers (not clarifying whether they monitor all activity on those personal devices)

• 86% reported conducting round-the-clock monitoring outside of school

• 71% reported using artificial intelligence to automatically flag certain student behaviors

• 43% said they have a secondary human review team beyond AI automation

Leading the way in the study was Cinnamon Bloss, a professor at UC San Diego’s Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and director of the Center for Empathy and Technology.

Alison O’Daffer, a clinical psychology student in the San Diego State University/UC San Diego Joint Doctoral Program, is listed as first author.

The study outlined two goals: Identify school-based online surveillance systems currently operating and explore their features and processes.

Analyses of companies operating in the United States and Canada were conducted from February to June 2024.

Researchers said they found surveillance companies through a systematic search of GovSpend — a data aggregation service for public records — and the EdTech Index. Publicly available information from company websites supplemented the research.

The 14 companies have a variety of ways they gain access to student digital activity, from browser plug-ins and device software to application programming interfaces, or API, according to a statement from UCSD Health.

All schools in the San Diego Unified School District, which includes five public campuses in La Jolla, use the platform Blocksi, according to Tyler Rudolph, the district’s information technology director.

Blocksi’s student and school safety features were approved by the district in May 2024, though it wasn’t the first time the platform had been used for classroom management. When safety monitoring tools grew in demand, a lot of similarities and features crossed over, Rudolph told the La Jolla Light.

“The district ultimately chose to consolidate contracts for classroom management and content filtering, which allowed us to also acquire the student safety component without additional cost under the same product,” he said.

Blocksi offers student communications and online monitoring, but not social media monitoring (except for web browser use on school devices). To monitor data, it accesses school-provided accounts with the help of automated AI technology. Blocksi is one of six companies with a human review team.

Like many of its peers, Blocksi says it conducts monitoring of school-issued devices at school and any location outside of school. Student-owned devices can be monitored as well if students are signed into their school account.

Blocksi says it does not track online activity on smartphone applications or access student data through a browser plug-in or apps.

Rudolph said administrators follow policies and procedures for monitoring and that the district sets a default level for it. Individual schools are allowed to add criteria at the site administrator’s discretion.

“We’ve found nearly all incidents [of flagged behavior] were not novel and already covered by existing policies,” Rudolph said. “However, this tool has allowed school staff to pivot many incidents to a proactive intervention rather than reactive response.”

There is more to be explored in school-based surveillance, the study indicates. Questions include the scope and practices of the surveillance industry and the lack of empirical evidence regarding the technology’s efficacy, researchers say.

Authors noted that their findings may not be up to date in the “rapidly changing landscape of technology companies.” And their reliance on publicly available website data may not paint a full picture of company policies, they said.

But they also pointed to their paper as a useful resource for students and parents, as well as parties who seek to make informed decisions about which technologies to use.