UN issues landmark global guidelines for child online safety

In today’s digital age, child safety in online spaces has become a more concerning issue.

Owing to insufficient safety nets in social media platforms, kids have been falling prey to online harassment, predatory abuse, and privacy invasion.

Although, the governments across the world have taken steps to ban social media for under 18 teens, these measures have proved insufficient to protect them online, as reported by the UN Human Rights Office.

The UN body has recently released landmark guidelines, aiming to protect the kids from digital harms, stemming from the poor and addictive platform design choices.

The report titled Getting Children’s Safety Online Right, calls for a thorough and human rights-based approach by shifting the responsibility and accountability to technology companies and corporate safety by design.

UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk in a statement said, “The digital world that connects children to learning, community, and creativity also exposes them to real risks to their safety, privacy, and well-being.”

According to Turk, design features, such as autoplay, persistent notifications and infinite scrolling are largely responsible for making children addicted to social media and making them vulnerable to online risks. He also argued that bans and age-verification systems are not enough to protect kids.

Here the ten key steps for protecting children online:

1. The tech companies are required to make digital environments safer by improving or moderating addictive design features and robustly regulating online children-oriented marketing.
2. While regulating the digital spaces, it is important to take into account children’s rights both offline and online. The rights include access to information, expression and right to participate.
3. Digital platforms must adopt “privacy by default” to ensure maximum protection for children. Commercial micro-targeting must not be allowed. Any necessary data must be purpose-limited and governed by highest safety protocols.
4. The companies should perform child rights impact assessment as a part of broader human rights.
5. Even the age verification systems must be governed according to safety standards to protect privacy. Transparency must be ensured while outsourcing data to third parties.
6. Age-based access restrictions should be tailored to address specific, well-defined harms, consistent with current regulations on pornography and gambling. This framework should now be applied to emerging challenges, such as the use of AI chatbots.
7. The input of children should be incorporated while regulating digital environments. They must have a say in shaping the digital world.
8. The social media platforms are obliged to incorporate transparency in reports concerning their design and data practices.
9. Besides transparency, accountability must be supported by regulated reporting mechanisms and independent oversight. Any violations must be met with legal consequences.
10. Digital spaces are the rapidly evolving spaces. Hence, inter-dimensional collaboration such as from independent researchers is needed to assess the best approaches.