Introduction

This chapter sets the stage for how contemporary children’s lives have become entangled within digital capitalism. It introduces the definition of the KidTech industry as the professional ecosystems, digital infrastructures, and regulatory frameworks that create digital play spaces geared to kids with the purpose of engaging directly with kids as consumers. Understanding the KidTech industry requires questioning its two parts, the kid in KidTech and the tech in KidTech. The remaining sections of the chapter establish how the book grew out of broader questions about how young people’s lives shape, and are shaped by, capitalist forces. I end the chapter with an explanation of my choice to speak to multiple audiences by weaving a narrative voice in and through a more scholarly approach.