Following a long-established tradition, the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) and the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) trainees work on a joint project to mark the end of their traineeship. They are free to choose the format and topics. In doing so, they have the opportunity to shine a light on issues affecting data protection and privacy, on their own terms.
This time, trainees chose to organise a conference focusing on the many ways children and teenagers’ lives are impacted by digital technologies. From parents, educators, to regulators, an issue concerns us all.
Here is how everything unfolded, from the organisers themselves.
When we speak about the internet’s potential to transform lives, it is both in terms of convenience and opportunities, but also our outlook and opinions. One aspect, for instance, especially in the last 20 years with social media, is the threshold of what is acceptable or not to share online, and what has now become normal information shared by us and others. The spontaneity of sharing, and maybe oversharing, can have implications to the privacy of individuals, especially of young people, who may not be aware of the consequences of having their information exposed online, forever.
This is why we dedicated our conference to the ever-pressing question of what it means to be raised as a child or young person surrounded by screens, powered by technologies, with the ability to intrude on our personal lives. As many of our speakers noted, it is a broad and complex discussion that requires making space for everyone involved to sit at the table. The conference tackled the most prominent aspects of children and young people’s digitalisation patterns and effects in the field of data protection, while acknowledging how intertwined they are with other fields, like safety and education.
Against this background, EDPS Supervisor Wiewiórowski opened the conference with some important questions, shifting focus to a more intimate but no less crucial aspect: the established bond of trust between parents and children. Before everyday and mainstream use of the internet, parents had limited options to know what their children did and thought; these days, the potential for surveillance is there.
In this context:
- As a society, do we expect parents to surveil their children as a form of caring?
- Do children themselves count on being surveiled, as a sign of their parents caring about them?
- Will this result in submissive children, and what will happen once they grow and break free from parental control?
From there, the discussion shifted to a general overview of the impact that our digitalised world has on children today. Luca Bertuzzi, MLex’s Senior AI Correspondent, stated that this technological progress comes at a social cost, and the EU has traditionally acted to find the right balance. According to Luca Bertuzzi, it will take more resources, self-confidence, and, ultimately, political leadership to write the next chapter on how the EU responds to these challenges.
In our efforts to provide a diverse set of knowledgeable voices, we asked Dr. Emma Beuckels, Postdoctoral researcher at the University of Ghent, to address sharenting, when parents publicise their children’s lives, and influencer sharenting, when people with a significant following online publicise their children’s lives. In what she named the platformisation of the family, the experience of raising a child becomes entertainment for the online community -and an opportunity to seize for marketing agencies. There is a shared responsibility between parents, regulators, platforms and the industry, to address the structural challenges and put children rights front and centre, Dr. Beuckels argued.
For our hour-long panel, we decided to look at the classroom. Schools are spaces that are shifting with e-learning, social media and, more recently, AI. However, they also bring the opportunity to transform how new generations engage with technology and play a central role in literacy efforts.
With this approach in mind, we welcomed four experts on the matter from various backgrounds, including the regulatory sphere, to academia and civil society. Fabiola Bas Palomares, Lead Policy and Advocacy Officer at Eurochild, stressed that children do care about their privacy choices, as platforms scramble to comply with the mandate to provide services and designs they can understand. Dr. Ingrida Milkaitė, Post-doctoral researcher at the University of Ghent, echoed these calls and explored the dynamics in the process of datafication, where many aspects of children and young peoples’ lives are analysed and quantified. She also addressed the existing fragmentation when it comes to enforcing regulations in place, in a context where countries are proposing age verification measures and social media bans.
We were able to count on the enforcer’s perspective brought by Anne-Charlotte Recker, Front Office Director and Executive Committee Member at the Belgian Data Protection Authority, (APD-GBA). She walked us through some of the most common types of complaints that parents and teachers come across when schools become controllers of personal data. She also highlighted the need to proactively engage with these communities, explaining how the APD-GBA has put on campaigns to raise awareness on the importance of protecting children and young people’s privacy.
Finally, Andreea Șerban, Global Privacy and AI Analyst at Future of Privacy Forum, shed light on how current regulation grapples with AI , focusing on how the EU’s AI Act stands out in the global context, and the role of resources such as conformity assessments. She mentioned that many stakeholders await further guidance on the matter, and identified challenges pertaining to transparency and disclosure around these technologies.
Panellists agreed on the need for more collective efforts from regulators, but also educators and families, platforms and media, to come together to protect the fundamental right to privacy of children. They also concurred that transparency and literacy are essential for people, society as a whole, to be able to freely exercise their privacy rights.
To bring the discussion to a close, the conference ended with closing remarks from the Head of the European Data Protection Board (EDPB) Secretariat Isabelle Vereecken, who summarised the main points discussed during the conference and reiterated the EDPB’s commitment to protecting minors under the existing EU regulations.
When we ask ourselves how to protect children, she remarked, we are asking ourselves which society we want to shape in the future.
As the event ended, two ideas echoed by many of our guests lingered. On the one hand, children and young people care about their privacy, and the road ahead demands including their voices in the decisions that affect them, in a way that they can understand. Secondly, it is up to all of us, regulators, enforcers and platforms, but also families, educators and developers, to continue working towards a digital landscape that works for its youngest users, and not against them.
We would like to thank our speakers for generously sharing their expertise with us, as well as everyone at the EDPS and EDPB who kindly supported us in making this event a reality.
As the discussion on how to build a safer digital future goes on, we hope this conference offered some perspective on the importance to uphold the rights of those most in need of protection.
Written by the EDPS and EDPB Trainees