Enable children’s participation, expression and access to information
Innovating for child participation in a digital world means creating opportunities for children to form opinions, impart and receive diverse information, and freely join social and political activities. Although these are sometimes overlooked or sacrificed for safety reasons, children’s civil rights and freedoms are vital for their participation in a digital society, no less than for adults.
The principle of participation draws together multiple rights. These concern children’s civil rights and freedoms as societal actors:
Freedom of expression, including the right to free speech, opinions and political views: both for themselves and to engage with those of others, subject to the rights of others, national security and public order.
Freedom of thought: the ability to form one’s own opinion, decisions and choice of faith, and have this respected and supported, proportionate to the child’s evolving capacities, and not be manipulated, nudged or punished.
Freedom of association and peaceful assembly: the ability to participate freely and safely in social and political activities, including child-led activism, without surveillance or undue restrictions.
Information access: meaning that children can both access and contribute to content of all kinds; this should be easy to find, in their languages, from a plurality of sources and be beneficial in multiple ways; any restrictions should be transparent and in children’s best interests.
Participation includes and goes beyond the right to be heard in the process of digital innovation (see Principle 3: Consultation). In Principle 6, we focus on participating in society through digital means.
Every child is entitled to express and impart views without restriction in respect of age or capacity to any audience or indeed, to none, and on whatever issue they choose.
Digital innovators can harness the generative power of design to open opportunities for constructive self-expression, creativity and exploration, and promote access to diverse information:
A child’s wellbeing, social life, play, creativity, self-expression and learning can be enhanced when collaborating and sharing with others. Provide children with safe experiences, both online and in person, that help develop relationships and social skills.
“Participation is like if a friend invites you, you can participate. If a friend invites you to something lie a sports tournament, you can participate in it with loads of other friends.”
Child aged 7-8. Greater London
Design Cases
Digital products and services can facilitate children’s participation in social and political activities, freedom of expression and access to information. But they can also undermine children’s participation, for instance, by facilitating chilling effects through surveillance or using AI-driven recommendation systems that filter, select and serve information to a child in restrictive or distorting ways, or even destructive ways.
“I like the bit where it says you have the right to be you because sometimes social media can make you feel like you can’t be you. You have to be someone else and be like other people.”
Child aged 11–12, Yorkshire
Livestreaming platforms such as Twitch, which facilitate freedom of expression and access to information, have sometimes been abused by content creators or audiences to cause life-threatening harm to an opponent or targeted streamers through prank calls.
“Well, it’s good and bad. [Discord] is good because you can have many friends there. And you can join servers which is a bunch of people that you want to talk to… But it can be bad because there are servers on there that are… are actually quite illegal
Child aged 13–14, Essex
In the global children’s consultation on General Comment No 25, children spoke of how the hostility they experience online inhibits their freedom of expression, information, assembly and association.
Recognising children’s rights to participate in digital spaces that many see as ‘for adults’ or ‘for the general public’ remains a challenge that designers could help overcome rather than perpetuate. Although children’s ‘right to freedom of expression is not an absolute right’, it can only be restricted in ways ‘prescribed by law’, ‘legitimate’ and ‘necessary in a democratic society’.
The right, I mean, it could mean the right that everybody should be able to express their opinion on what they think on it. But it could also be wrong, as there could be people that aren’t using their real opinion and are just going to say something to try and hurt others.
Child aged 12-13, Essex
Giving power to children in public and social spaces to ‘block’ unwanted contacts without them knowing is one way of allowing children to ‘distance [themselves] from those [they] don’t want to have contact with’. Instagram offers this control feature in the newly updated app.
Innovators should try to anticipate both the intended and unintended use of their products and services and ensure that efforts to protect children do not come at the cost of realising their other rights, including information, expression and assembly. Likewise, efforts to facilitate information access, expression and assembly should not come at the cost of children’s safety, privacy or wellbeing.
