A Child Rights Manifesto for advertisers
As innovation affect children’s lives and the exercise of their rights in complex and wide-ranging ways, it is key that all actors involved in the process contribute to uphold the rights of every child, from online platforms themselves to advertisers and game designers software developers.
Advertising remains the core of the business model of most online platforms where children spend time, which has magnified the amount of data that companies collect on children: research estimated in 2017 that by the time a child is over 13, advertisement technology companies will have captured an average of 72 million data points on them. This trend of datafication can have significant consequences for a child’s development and severely impact the digital footprint that children ’inherit’ as they grow.
In response to this problem, Eurochild worked with the Conscious Advertising Network on a Children’s Rights and Wellbeing Manifesto. This document sets out six guiding principles for advertisers and agencies to work towards keeping children safe online. It guides them in assessing how children might be affected by their activities, regardless whether you market directly to children or not. Recommendations include embedding safety-by-design in the development and distribution of advertising, supporting child users’ decision making, and placing advertising that is age appropriate by design.
In such a complex digital environment, advertisers and agencies also have a key role to play when it comes to protecting children online and preventing all forms of exploitation of children online. We encourage a multi-disciplinary approach to protecting children online, one that contemplates the full spectrum of children’s rights and regards children as agents of their own lives.
