EGDF calls for a holistic human rights centric approach on the protection of minors in the digital environment

In its response to the Commission call for evidence on the Digital Service Act Guidelines to enforce the protection of minors online, EGDF underlined that:

The Commission must take a human rights-centric approach to drafting the guidelines on the protection of minors.
1. By principle, platforms should evaluate and balance all their policies on content and services allowed on their platforms from the perspective of fundamental rights and freedoms in the EU. This includes, for example, protection of minors from harmful content, protection from discrimination, right to privacy and securing their access to culture, as well as freedom of arts and expression, free movement of services on the digital single market area and freedom to conduct business. The same principle applies to the Commission while it is drafting the guidelines.
2. As underlined by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the guidelines must empower parents to take care of their responsibility for the upbringing and development of the child. The Commission must ensure that the guidelines ensure that parents, not platforms, have the primary control over, e.g., digital artistic content their children can access and the personal data of their children.
3. The Commission guidelines must carefully ensure they respect children’s right to leisure and participation in cultural life. It is important to ensure that the protection of minors’ practices does not just empower parents to make informed decisions; they must also empower children to make informed decisions in their digital lives.
4. The Commission should approach the protection of children from both the perspective of children as consumers of digital content and the perspective of children as creators of digital content.
The appropriate and proportionate measures to ensure a high level of privacy, safety, and security for minors online must be holistic and
1. Include the ability of business users to clearly communicate different age requirements for consumers. Platforms must provide traders with a way to communicate to their consumers if their applications are suitable for children from privacy and consumer protection perspectives in addition to content perspectives. The Commission guidelines must ensure that platforms allow their business users to follow European standards and regulatory requirements on the protection of minors.
2. Be based on clear responsibilities in the value chain. Age assurance and verification, as well as GDPR consent management, should happen on the device level. Applications should always have access to age information from the parental control tools on the device level.
The Commission should take a risk-based approach to age assurance and verification. It should carefully evaluate when age assurance and verification processes are the appropriate solutions. Age assurance and age verification framework must not lead to situations where children’s access to culture is limited due to regulatory burden or where parents’ ability to control their children’s digital environment becomes more limited. Furthermore, age assurance and age verification systems must not create market entry barriers.

The full position paper can be downloaded from here: https://www.egdf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/202409-EGDF-Response-on-the-Call-for-Evidence-on-Digital-Services-Act-%E2%80%93-guidelines-to-enforce-the-protection-of-minors-online.pdf

The broader EGDF approach to the protection of minors in the digital environem can be accessed here: https://www.egdf.eu/documentation/7-balanced-protection-of-vulnerable-players/protection-of-minors/