Two Necessary Steps for Enhancing Business Respect for Child Rights Online

“If a child is accessing a site that is not suitable for them, where is the owner of that site, where is the platform?”  

(Brazil, 14–17 age group, UNICEF, Children’s Best Interests in Digital Policy and Practice). 

When it comes to children’s safety online, the public conversation often begins too late. Attention often turns to the platform or the lawsuit long after the design choices and incentives that made harm possible were put in place. Respecting children’s rights in the digital environment requires something more than after-the-fact accountability. It requires companies to identify risks before products are launched and to be transparent about those risks once they are known.  

In practice, there are two necessary steps that technology companies should take to support this nuanced approach, and UNICEF has published guidance on both: child rights due diligence; and the public disclosure of risks in formal financial and sustainability reports. 

Due Diligence 

Recent court cases involving social media and children’s rights have centered on the role that design choices play in determining whether a product, service, or technology may adversely affect children. The cases illustrated a shift in focus from content moderation to design choices that may shape children’s overall product experience, such as infinite scroll, autoplay, and notifications. 

The immediate questions at stake in these cases are whether companies properly assessed the impact of their design choices on children, took appropriate action, and warned the public about the risks involved. However, it is not a sustainable proposition for children's rights online to be protected in hindsight by court action. Technology moves far too fast and affects far too many people in vastly different social contexts for that to be feasible.  

Rather, it is in all our interests for companies to look ahead to the risks of the next technology, not just look back at the shortcomings of the last one. We should expect proactive approaches that identify potential adverse impacts on children and appropriate mitigations before a product, service, feature, or technology is launched and throughout its life. 

This is where child rights due diligence and Child Rights Impact Assessments (CRIAs) play an essential role. A CRIA is a process through which companies evaluate the impact of their products, services, and technology on children’s rights, as defined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and other relevant human rights instruments. Key features include: 

• Using all child rights and human rights as a reference point, since technology can potentially affect them all. This includes rights such as non-discrimination, health, education, mental and physical well-being, rest and leisure, privacy, participation in cultural life and the arts, freedom of expression, and the right to access information. 

• Hearing directly from children and engaging experts or legitimate representatives who have insights into children’s views and experiences. 

• Understanding and addressing impacts on children across a wide range of contexts, such as different languages, ages, abilities, countries, and income levels, with particular attention to children most vulnerable to harm. 

• Communicating the findings internally and externally, including to users, decision makers, and the public. 

The UNICEF D-CRIA Toolbox provides companies with guidance on conducting robust CRIAs in the digital environment and can be used by all companies that develop, deploy, or use digital technologies.  

Formal Reporting and Disclosure 

A second challenge to address is the potential “materiality gap” between what companies disclose in formal reports today and what they consider salient impacts on children, as well as the material risks and opportunities for financial performance arising from those impacts. 

Based on a review of today’s sustainability, responsible business, and human rights reports, it appears that technology companies are not currently disclosing the information needed for a range of critical stakeholders—policymakers, regulators, and child rights advocates—to make informed decisions and judgments about the impact of technology on children. Robust, science-based, and complete disclosure by companies is a necessary precondition for effective policy, regulation, and enforcement by governments.   

Formal disclosure matters to investors, too. Adverse impacts on children can create risks and opportunities for financial performance, especially when regulation, legal action, new interpretations of liability, and regulatory investigations affect the size of the market available to technology companies and the costs of providing services. 

A review of today’s formal financial reports suggests that technology companies should disclose more information about the impacts on children arising from their design choices, business models, and growth plans. This is essential for providers of capital, who need disclosures that inform investment decisions and help them assess portfolio risk. This includes: 

• Governance: The processes, controls, and procedures to oversee child rights in the digital environment. 

• Strategy: The relationship between the company’s strategy, business model, and its impact on children. 

• Impacts, risks, and opportunities: The processes, policies, and actions to identify, assess, and manage material impacts on children and the resulting risks and opportunities for financial performance. 

• Metrics and targets: The company’s performance and progress addressing material impacts, risks, and opportunities. 

The UNICEF Disclosure Recommendations provide detailed guidance on how child rights-related disclosures can help companies implement existing mandatory and voluntary reporting standards. 

Over the past three decades, the technology industry has brought waves of innovation, each with its own impacts, risks, and dilemmas. These novel challenges require robust due diligence, informed public dialogue, and a forward-looking approach. The tools, methods, and resources are available to address these gaps; now we need companies to adopt them.