What’s in a child’s best interests online?

As part of the Children's best interests in a digital world project, UNICEF Innocenti consulted 23 experts from various regions and sectors to gather diverse perspectives and recommendations for how to better uphold children’s best interests in the digital environment. 

During the consultations, experts got a ‘sneak preview’ of preliminary findings from child consultations conducted in seven countries for the project. The rich discussions that followed included reactions to the findings and ideas for governments and companies to act.  

Participants included representatives from academia (including from South Africa and the UN University), regulators (such from France, Australia, Ireland and the UK), the private sector (including Roblox, Snap, Microsoft and LEGO), and civil society (such as 5Rights Foundation and Human Rights Watch).  

Below are some of the key takeaways from the expert consultations:   

Upholding all rights 

• Experts stressed that the right to safety should not overshadow other rights, which often happens. A rights-based approach requires equal consideration of rights, such as to privacy, participation, freedom of expression, and safety, ensuring children’s diverse needs are respected. Similarly, ‘best interests’ should not become a catch-all justification that diminishes other child rights.
• It was also highlighted that online harms for children can translate into collective harm for society, such as undermining democracy, access to information, or civic participation. This clearly connected what’s in a child’s best interests with collective societal impacts.
• When discussing content moderation, the focus should include not only what children are prevented from seeing, but also what platforms recommend to them, and how this shapes their autonomy, rights, and worldview. 

Digital literacy and parental/caregiver involvement 

• Research from the child consultations showed that teenagers are often reluctant for parents to use parental control tools because of privacy concerns. The experts concurred that this highlighted the need for smarter, more context-sensitive tools to support safety while respecting adolescents’ autonomy and relationships.
• Digital literacy needs to be strengthened for parents/caregivers and children. Parents and caregivers require better understanding of the risks and benefits for children in the digital environment, and guidance on supportive supervision approaches. This would help address, for example, how children often hesitate to report harms for fear of restrictions. 

AI and emerging technologies 

• Experts highlighted the urgency of examining children’s engagement with AI and chatbots, especially the impacts on emotional development, critical thinking, and dependency seen through the lens of children’s best interests. 

Inclusion, co-creation and understandability  

• It was noted that recommendation algorithms should be more culturally responsive, reflecting diverse contexts, especially from the Global South. Co-creation with children can ensure platform design reflects diverse cultural and developmental contexts.
• Terms and conditions of services should be in more child-friendly language or easier for children to understand and interact with. This was shared as a concern from the children UNICEF consulted, and confirmed by the experts. 

Regulation and enforcement 

• Experts pointed to a patchwork of regulations, with enforcement lagging behind. Rather than creating new laws, experts emphasized the importance of enforcing existing regulations, where applicable, and promoting regulatory harmonization and alignment across jurisdictions, to provide clarity and accountability for companies.
• Where regulatory gaps exist, these must be filled. Overall, it was felt that regulations should target specific harmful features of platforms rather than result in blanket bans on children’s digital engagement 

Reporting and redress mechanisms 

• A key point raised was the burden of reporting, social stigma, and normalization of harms deter children from coming forward. Platforms must ensure greater transparency about reporting processes (what happens to a report, how data is handled, timelines for action etc.).
• Timely responses and accelerated removal of harmful content are critical, as delays exacerbate harms.
• Redress systems need to be significantly improved and made child-centered. At present, grievance mechanisms on many platforms are weak, and in many countries sufficient regulatory frameworks are lacking. Addressing this requires both stronger platform accountability and greater support for law enforcement to ensure children can access effective remedies when harms occur. 

Best interests principle 

• A few experts noted that the principle of the child’s best interests is increasingly being appropriated or reduced to a procedural checkbox by some organizations.
• ‘Best interests’ should be the primary responsibility of States to define, assess, determine and enforce. To this end, they should provide clear regulatory guidance for compliance. Companies should focus on complying with legislation and guidance rather than self-define ‘best interests’.
• One way the principle is being misused is by equating children’s views with their best interests. While children’s views are essential, they do not always represent children’s best interests (e.g., children in the UNICEF consultations saying they would be willing to share more data to access higher levels in online games).
• Instead of seeking a universal definition, the focus should be on how companies evaluate and implement best interests in the design and functioning of their platforms and services, based on ‘child rights by design’ best practices.
• Experts suggested that good practices from the corporate sector to uphold children’s best interests should be written up as case studies and shared. 

We are grateful to the participants for their time and expertise. The discussions will inform the final project report’s recommendations for how to better uphold children’s best interests in the digital environment.