4 ways you can help curb the tech industry's child labor problem

The device you're using to read this story may have its roots in child labor.

In a society infatuated with tech, we rarely stop to think about how that tech is made. But many of the little parts that make up your favorite high-tech devices, advocates say, lead to a massive global inequality for children. 

Joost Kooijmans, a child labor specialist with UNICEF, says that some of the most serious child labor concerns are with the mining of raw materials that go into high-tech products. 

"There is gold inside your phone. There is cobalt inside the lithium battery. There's coltan that's used in the miniature circuitry in your phone," he tells Mashable. "These are minerals that are being mined in areas where law enforcement and government oversight is very weak — and what you find is that a lot of children end up going to work in these regions." Read more...