Teens ask social media companies to protect their mental health

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child(1) represents a consensus in principle. But how do its principles apply to children’s use of social media in practice? Stewart Dresner reports.

“Some 80 per cent of children living in developed Western countries have a digital footprint before they are two years old, (largely due to the actions of their family members)”(2) declared Paul Breitbarth, Member of Jersey’s Data Protection Authority. He provided this attention-grabbing statistic when introducing the panel of four female teenage students from the Hautlieu School in Jersey.

This session was a high point of the Global Privacy Assembly (GPA), organised at the end of October by Jersey’s DPA. Resolutions on children’s issues had been adopted at previous GPAs in Morocco in 2016 and Mexico in 2021. But this 46th conference was the first time that teenagers have had an opportunity to give their views on social media to this specialist international audience.

Continue Reading

UK Report subscribers, please login to access the full article

LOGIN

If you wish to subscribe, please see our subscription information.

Subscribe