Digital inequality and children’s rights
How children’s backgrounds shape children’s experiences in the digital environment.
Children do not experience the digital environment equally. Poverty, disability, migration status, care status, housing deprivation and discrimination shape whether children can access, understand, and safely benefit from digital technologies. These differences matter for children’s rights, including the rights to education, information, participation, privacy, protection from violence, and access to services and remedies.
Connectivity alone does not guarantee meaningful access. Children need affordable and reliable internet, appropriate devices, accessible services, digital skills, trusted adults, safe online spaces, and effective routes to support and remedy. Without these conditions, offline inequalities are reproduced and often intensified online.
This is particularly relevant for the groups targeted by the European Child Guarantee, including children experiencing homelessness or severe housing deprivation, children with disabilities, children with mental health issues, children with a migrant background or ethnic minority origin, children in alternative care and children in precarious family situations.
Digital inclusion should therefore be treated as a core children’s rights and child poverty issue, including within the European Child Guarantee, aimed at ensuring effective access to essential services for children in need. The proposed EU KIDS Act offers an opportunity to translate this recognition into binding obligations for providers. Measures intended to protect children should not deepen existing inequalities or exclude those who lack documentation, accessible technology or an available guardian.
