Keeping Children Safe Online
Trends in Online Platform Regulation and Emerging Lessons
About
This policy brief focuses on platform regulation as a key area of current regulatory development. It builds on existing human rights-based guidance for policymakers and elaborates on the children’s rights dimensions.
The brief covers three key areas:
- What online platform regulation is and how it affects children’s rights, including their right to protection from violence, abuse, and exploitation
- Global regulatory trends as of June 2025 based on a comparative analysis of platform regulation across six jurisdictions
- Guidance for developing and implementing online platform regulation that works for children.
Governments have historically taken different approaches to online platform regulation. These range from industry self-regulation through non-binding codes of conduct, to co-regulatory models where industry‑developed standards are reviewed and adopted by regulators, to traditional ‘top-down’ regulation led by the state.
Rather than prescribing a specific model, the brief offers a child rights-based analysis of global developments to support policymakers in developing locally relevant yet globally aligned regulatory frameworks. While many frameworks are newly adopted and still evolving, the urgency is clear: policymakers must act now to protect children and their rights.
