Gaggle is a self-described student safety suite of tools that uses AI and ‘trained’ safety ‘experts’ to monitor student activity on student accounts and devices, meaning it can automatically scan student-created content in school-linked accounts, platforms or devices covered by the district’s setup and send what it perceives as a red flag to human reviewers.
On its face, this seems like a reasonable use of AI; leveraging its capabilities to take in and digest volumes of content and only forwarding what’s necessary for review.
So, it makes sense as to why School Districts have been and continue to flock to Gaggle as a solution – in fact, Berkeley Heights has it as an agenda item for approval for a second time. The last time it came up I brought up concerns about student privacy, concerns on chain of custody, law enforcement access to student material, and the overall implications connected to student civil liberties.
Those concerns, however, were only part of what can give us pause.
The research on Gaggle and systems like it is very limited and when you consider the extraordinary access and potential consequences of this access; that alone should be enough to question not only the price tag but whether a District should even implement it at all.
A report issued by RAND in 2023 found that AI-based student activity monitoring for suicide risk found limited evidence on how these systems are implemented, whether they accurately detect suicide risk, whether they improve outcomes and what unintended harms they may create. Their conclusion was reasonable – we need more evidence before we unleash these systems in environments that touch children’s lives – especially in arenas of vulnerability.
The Center for Democracy & Technology reported that this kind of software is widespread and can create privacy, discipline, and equity risks, especially for students who rely on school-issued devices. That raises equity concerns because students who rely on school-issued devices may be more exposed to monitoring than students using personal devices – this puts children from working class families more on the radar. This is a set up for what we already see with police in schools and the impact of their presence on vulnerable student populations.
To that point, a 2022 investigation by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey examined companies including Gaggle, Bark, GoGuardian and Securly. The report warned that edtech monitoring tools may increase contact with law enforcement and that parents and communities are often not adequately informed.
Specific to Gaggle; the report cited:
“In March 2021, a student newspaper in Minnesota reported that, as a result of flagged activity by Gaggle, school administrators outed a student to their parents without first talking to or alerting the student.”
The ACLU’s report took a broader look at the student surveillance industry in its report “Digital Dystopia” and questioned whether the claims made by vendors on safety were actually evidenced.
“Many unsubstantiated efficacy claims asserted by EdTech Surveillance companies present what appear to be precise, data-driven assertions but are actually impossible to verify. For example, Gaggle claims that ‘during the 2021-2022 academic year, [it] helped districts save the lives of 1,562 students who were planning or actively attempting suicide.’ Similarly, Bark claims its student surveillance software has ‘prevented’ 16 school shootings.”
“Aside from a total absence of publicly shared details substantiating these claims, the claims themselves are impossible to accurately make or verify because, as The New York Times correctly observed, ‘calculating figures like suicide prevention is a murky science at best.’”
The report also raised concerns about chilling effects on student speech and the impact on students who feel constantly watched. It cited an ACLU-commissioned YouGov survey on school surveillance, fielded October 20–26, 2022, which found that, out of the students who responded, 32% said surveillance makes them feel like they are always being watched, 27% said it could be used to discipline them or their friends and 26% worried about what schools or contracted companies do with the data collected.
The same survey also found concerns that surveillance data could be shared with law enforcement ( 22%), used against students by a future college or employer (21%), or expose sensitive information related to reproductive health care (21%,) gender-affirming care (18%), immigration status (18%) or LGBTQIA+ identity 13%.
The report also took aim at the industry’s marketing tactics…
“Proving precise suicide prevention figures is self-serving and irresponsible; it is virtually impossible to say that an action would have been taken if not for a specific intervention, such as students talking about suicide or violent acts but having no real intention to act. It is similarly impossible to rule out whether an alternative intervention, like a friend reporting a troubling text or an interaction with a school counselor, would have had a similar impact.”
The 74 looked at how the Minneapolis Public School system used Gaggle and reported that the system monitored student materials through school-linked Google and Microsoft accounts, including emails, chats, documents, and assignments. The reporting raised concerns about context, including situations where student writing about mental health or past trauma could trigger alerts to school officials.
“While the system flagged Logsdon-Wallace for referencing the word ‘suicide,’ context was never part of the equation, he said. Two days later, in mid-September, a school counselor called his mom to let her know what officials had learned. The meaning of the classroom assignment — that his mental health had improved — was seemingly lost in the transaction between Gaggle and the school district. He felt betrayed.”
“‘I was trying to be vulnerable with this teacher and be like, “Hey, here’s a thing that’s important to me because you asked,” Logsdon-Wallace said. “Now, when I’ve made it clear that I’m a lot better, the school is contacting my counselor and is freaking out.’”
As someone who also works in the field, I have my own experiences with the vulnerabilities of these systems and have had to negotiate with school officials and law enforcement in more than one district in backing away from overly intrusive, inappropriate screenings and interventions because of a mis-read.
In 2025, an Associated Press and Seattle Times investigation found major privacy and security concerns – in one case reporters were inadvertently able to access thousands of sensitive student documents connected to flagged material. The investigation also reported concerns involving LGBTQ students, privacy, trust and the lack of independent proof that these systems reliably improve safety outcomes.
The rush to these systems is eerily similar to what we saw and are seeing with law enforcement presence in schools. Evidence is either ignored or not sought as Districts pump hundreds of thousands of dollars annually into a security mishmash with limited independent proof of improving student safety and a growing record of documented privacy, equity and trust concerns.
So what can a District do instead?
Student mental health crises are real (suicide is a leading cause of death for teens) and schools face an enormous amount of pressure to ‘do something’ however, the evidence that tools like Gaggle effectively reduce suicides or improve outcomes is scarce and may be pointing in another direction.
Gaggle, the security theatre surrounding it as well as the potential consequences can potentially carry annual price tags that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single district- money that could be used to fund school counselors, partnerships with community mental health agencies, after school programming – things that have a far more evidence than anything the student surveillance industry has produced and are more natural to how kids and human beings work.
The choice isn’t between Gaggle and nothing.
It’s between Gaggle and something that might actually work.
Source Material
Gaggle homepage / product description:
https://www.gaggle.net/
Gaggle Service Level Agreement:
https://www.gaggle.net/service-level-agreement
RAND “Artificial Intelligence–Based Student Activity Monitoring for Suicide Risk”:
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RRA2900/RRA2910-1/RAND_RRA2910-1.pdf
Center for Democracy & Technology, “Hidden Harms: The Misleading Promise of Monitoring Students Online”:
https://cdt.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Hidden-Harms-The-Misleading-Promise-of-Monitoring-Students-Online-Research-Report-Final-Accessible.pdf
Senator Warren, “Warren, Markey Investigation Finds That EdTech Student Surveillance Platforms Need Urgent Federal Action to Protect Students”:
https://www.warren.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/356670%20Student%20Surveillance.pdf
ACLU, “Digital Dystopia: The Danger in Buying What the EdTech Surveillance Industry is Selling”:
https://www.aclu.org/publications/digital-dystopia-the-danger-in-buying-what-the-edtech-surveillance-industry-is-selling
The 74, “Gaggle Surveils Millions of Kids in the Name of Safety”:
https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-surveillance-minnesapolis-families-not-smart-ai-monitoring/
The 74, “An Inside Look at the Spy Tech That Followed Kids Home for Remote Learning”:
https://www.the74million.org/article/gaggle-spy-tech-minneapolis-students-remote-learning/
Associated Press, “Schools use AI to monitor kids, hoping to prevent violence. Our investigation found security risks”:
https://apnews.com/article/25a3946727397951fd42324139aaf70f
Associated Press, “Takeaways from our investigation on AI-powered school surveillance”:
https://apnews.com/article/ai-school-chromebook-surveillance-gaggle-investigation-takeaways-381fa82978f27eb85f20d03236820711
Stanford Law Review, “The Surveilled Student”:
https://review.law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2024/10/Citron-76-Stan.-L.-Rev.-1439.pdf
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