Five Core Themes
When designing, developing, and implementing Child Online Safety practices, policymakers should look to the following overarching themes to make sure children’s rights are enshrined in online spaces.
Five Core Themes
When designing, developing, and implementing Child Online Safety practices, policymakers should look to the following overarching themes to make sure children’s rights are enshrined in online spaces.
5 Things Every Policymaker Should Consider
These core themes for developing Child Online Safety policies have been summarised from the complete Child Online Safety Toolkit.
Identifying Risk and Mitigating Harm
Child Online Safety strategies must be developed primarily to maximise the benefits children can gain from digital technologies and mitigate risks. Children around the world will face many of the same risks, but some are more vulnerable to harm due to their location, gender, age, family circumstances, socio economic status, and availability of digital technology. Identifying risks and mitigating them by design is a key principle of child online safety.
Promoting Access, Accessibility, and Inclusion
The world online is an opportunity for young people to understand their rights and achieve their full potential. It is vital that Child Online Safety policies must promote inclusivity from every angle. Policymakers should look to build on best practices, seeking to ensure that all children benefit from Child Online Safety policies. A “digital divide” is likely to arise when some young people have access to a safe online space while others do not. Therefore, it is integral for policies to be adequately resourced both now and in the future, so the ever changing digital landscape can continuously protect young people’s rights online.
Building a Chain of Responsibility
Designing and enforcing Child Online Safety cannot be one party’s responsibility. While a government body should be mandated to coordinate how Child Online Safety is implemented, enacting this policy involves many people, organisations, and departments of government. To ensure an effective administration, there needs to be a liability framework within the policy. A pyramid of responsibility is recommended to inform child-centred design of digital spaces. Policymakers must embrace the complexity of responsibility for Child Online Safety so there are mechanisms of support for everyone within the chain of responsibility.
Integrating Child-Centred Design
Child-Centred design is a practical application of Child Online Safety, building the policy into services and digital products from the outset. This can look like preventing the spread of misinformation to young people, ensuring that products do not damage a child’s physical or mental health, and creating regulatory requirements for design and licensing new technologies. Child-centred design should be both an ethical concept and a legal requirement. Child Online Safety policies must prioritise the precautionary principle, so products and services are obliged to minimise risk before they are made available to children.
Ensuring Effectiveness
Child Online Safety can only be achieved through practical guidance, adequate resourcing, and thorough enforcement. So monitoring, evaluation, and data collection are key to protecting children online and informing a best practice of further policy development. Sufficient budgeting is necessary for implementation alongside measuring the effectiveness of the policy. Policymakers should aim to provide adequate funding for the central department responsible for Child Online Safety as well as departments cooperating with overlapping policy areas.
Creating a holistic Child Online Safety policy.