Privacy and Surveillance in Digital Life 2025 (Dataset, n=271)

This dataset is part of the Human Clarity Institute’s <b>AI–Human Experience 2025</b> data series. It examines how digitally active adults experience privacy erosion and surveillance in modern digital and AI-enabled environments, including perceived monitoring and tracking, behavioural self-regulation, power imbalance in data collection, and the emotional and autonomy-related impacts of surveillance.The dataset includes:<br>• validated 1–7 Likert-scale items<br>• perceived surveillance intensity, privacy understanding, and loss of control over personal data<br>• behavioural indicators such as self-censorship, platform avoidance, and behaviour modification due to surveillance concerns<br>• multi-select variables stored as canonical semicolon-delimited snake_case tokens<br>• open-text reflections with minimal safe cleaning (trim + newline removal only)<br>• demographic variables across six English-speaking countries<br>• digital life exposure (daily hours online) and AI-tool usage frequency<br>Data were collected on 19 December 2025 via Prolific from adults in the UK, US, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and Ireland.<br>All data were cleaned, anonymised, and processed under the Human Clarity Institute’s machine-readable dataset protocol, which includes:<br>• canonical snake_case variable naming<br>• validated numeric ranges<br>• standardised multi-select formats<br>• minimal safe text cleaning<br>• full alignment with the accompanying data dictionary<br>• removal of Prolific IDs and timestamps<br>• SHA-256 checksums for all files<br>This dataset contributes to understanding how people cognitively and behaviourally adapt to perceived surveillance and data collection in AI-mediated digital life, supporting longitudinal tracking of autonomy, trust, behavioural self-regulation, and human–AI boundary negotiation as these dynamics evolve over time.