According to recent estimates, one in three internet users are children below the age of 18, with an increasing proportion living in the Global South. As laid out in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), legal minors are undergoing crucial processes of human development, they have specific rights– to play, to parenting, to develop to their full potential, and so forth. Within this context, the reigning model of e-commerce, and the increasing value of children as a target market for advertisers, raises fundamental concerns. The technical affordances of the internet have made it possible for digital platforms to collect and monetise large amounts of personal information from children. While young social media users will typically consider their data to be ‘mine’, providers may look at user data to be ‘mined’; whether ‘mine’ or ‘mined’, data consumerism is often putting children’s rights on the line. In this IGF panel session, we will start from an analysis of existing regulatory data protection frameworks and tensions, in order to more comprehensively address the need to involve multiple stakeholders when promoting and ensuring digital rights of young people in a more global context, as a precondition for a more inclusive and sustainable online environment.
Speakers provisionally confirmed:
Carr, John
Chester, Jeffrey
Hancock, Marsali
Hurel, Louise Marie
Neves, Ana
Pals, Auke
Tavares, Thiago