UN says protecting children online an ‘urgent priority’

“MICRO-TARGETING” OF KIDS

Turk said simply focusing on age restrictions would leave unaltered the designs and algorithms that made the platforms unsafe in the first place.

Tech giants must embed safety “by design, instead of shifting the burden to parents and children”, he said.

The UN rights chief also said experience so far showed that bans could be easily circumvented and voiced concern that such bans could even end up pushing children to riskier, even less monitored platforms.

His office produced a set of 10 guidelines entitled “Getting Children’s Safety Online Right”.

These included ensuring the maximum protection of children’s data as a default setting, while the “micro-targeting” of children for commercial purposes, based on a digital record, “should not be permitted”.

They said emerging concerns such as restrictions on artificial intelligence chatbot use or addictive design features may warrant age restrictions.

Measures should be subject to independent oversight, with legal consequences that serve as deterrents, the guidelines said.

There should also be access to remedy for children whose rights are violated.

“Whatever regulations are adopted, it is essential to avoid inadvertently causing further harms. For example, age verification done wrong can both fail at its goal and endanger the privacy of both kids and adults,” said Turk.