The digital environment has a significant impact on children. It poses strong challenges but also ample opportunities for the exercise of children’s rights. Its landscape is complex and rapidly evolving. Discussions that are taking place now will shape children’s relationship to technology for decades to come.
What questions are we exploring now?
CRIN monitors the wide range of developments in the digital sphere and identifies pressing issues that need to be addressed from a children’s rights perspective. We have a particular interest in exploring questions such as:
What do rights-respecting experiences look like in the context of emerging technologies like generative AI?
How do we protect children from sexual abuse in an ever-changing digital landscape?
What are the implications of verifying or estimating someone’s age online?
How does the digital environment impact children’s mental health and well-being? or
How should children and parents interact in this area in order to realise children’s rights?
What topics have we explored so far?
We have published a report on a children’s rights approach to encryption (2022-2023), looking at the nuances of this current and polarised subject.
We have explored the issue of digital surveillance through art and technology workshops for the Tate Exchange (2020).
We have worked with partners to provide a rights-based perspective on the UK Online Harms White Paper (2018-2019).
We have examined disproportionate restrictions on children’s access to information, including with regard to Internet filters (2015).
How do we work?
We analyse cutting-edge topics through a children’s rights lens
We tackle difficult and controversial issues regarding the digital environment from a children’s rights perspective, like encryption, online harms and access to information online. We are increasing our focus on emerging topics, from artificial intelligence to online phenomena impacting children’s well-being.
We examine the full range of children’s rights in the digital environment, drawing connections with the other issues we work on
We do not see the digital environment or particular rights in isolation. Instead, we think about the links with sexual violence, counter-terrorism, civil and political rights or bodily autonomy. In the current discourse on children and technology, we aim to bridge the divide between a civil liberties focus and a protection from violence approach. We want to move the current discourse away from binaries and divisions, from an issue of “privacy versus protection” to one of “privacy and protection”.
We build relationships across areas of expertise and join efforts with others in advocacy
Relationship-building is absolutely central to the way CRIN works. We connect with organisations and professionals across the full range of expertise relevant to children’s rights in the digital environment. We have collaborated with civil liberties and digital rights organisations - for example at RightsCon sessions, at the Encryption Summit and in formulating points of consensus around online harms. We also regularly engage with practitioners working on the protection of children from sexual violence. In its engagements, CRIN contributes to ensuring that the children's rights approach is better represented in conversations within the industry.
We emphasise the diversity of children’s experiences, especially beyond Anglo-/Euro-centric spaces
Our work is geared towards nuance and complexity, helping to shift the debates about children and technology beyond the dominant Anglo-/Euro-centric areas. We are grateful to our partners from Brazil who have translated our encryption work and featured it in discussions about the national context.
We target varied audiences and promote a children’s rights perspective regarding laws and policies at the international, regional and national levels
We have made submissions to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and the Human Rights Committee. We have analysed the EU draft Regulation to prevent and combat child sexual abuse and participated in expert exchanges, including with policymakers. We have offered input regarding the UK’s Online Harms White Paper consultation and subsequently the Online Safety Bill, and we have spoken at the Canadian Internet Governance Forum (2020 and 2021).
We explain our perspective in accessible language
We want to make debates around children and the digital environment more accessible. We publish explainers, for example around particular technologies, and we clarify the terms of challenging debates in short discussion pieces.
In the media
Related areas of focus
Children’s rights in the digital age
Read more on this here.
Privacy and protection: A children's rights approach to encryption
Read more on this here.
Related content: Digital Rights, A-Z of children’s rights issues, Encryption