The data center industry has launched a coordinated youth outreach campaign using children's books, school field trips, classroom activities and holiday celebrations to build favorable public perception among elementary and high school students.

The 7x24 Exchange International, a nonprofit trade group, distributes children's literature including "What is a Data Center?" which features a honey badger named Honey touring a facility with a worker named Oliver. The story includes a child character asking about late-night online shopping. The group also created "International Data Center Day" with educational materials for schools, including data center-themed coloring pages, crossword puzzles, and multiple children's books about visiting data center facilities and meeting robot characters.

Industry-sponsored school activities have expanded rapidly. Since 2025, at least eleven companies and industry groups have organized student field trips to data centers, according to WIRED's review of public social media posts and blogs. In May, the Potomac chapter of the Association for Computer Operations Management distributed flag-making kits to 3,100 first graders across 37 Loudoun County, Virginia schools alongside informational cards citing the industry's "positive impact" on the local economy. Sabey, which operates seven U.S. data centers, has hosted multiple high school field trips in Washington state. Amazon invited DC-area high schools to visit its Arlington "Skills Center" focused on "cloud computing and future job possibilities." 7x24 Exchange organized a trip to a Cummins diesel power generation facility for Fridley High School students in Minnesota.

Alex Molnar, research professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and director of the National Education Policy Center, compared the strategy to tactics used by tobacco, oil and gas, and fast food industries. "A very, very big reason why corporations get involved in the schools is, quite simply, corporate propaganda," Molnar told WIRED. He questioned the educational value, asking: "Why would a third grader be interested in a data center?"

The campaign coincides with intensifying public pushback against data center expansion and energy consumption across multiple regions.