A twelve-year-old testifies before a legislative committee, describing how recommendation algorithms fed her increasingly extreme content about dieting until she developed an eating disorder, her story joining dozens of others from young people whose mental health deteriorated while platforms optimized for engagement that their developing minds could not resist. Lawmakers listen, express concern, propose legislation that technology companies immediately challenge as unconstitutional, impractical, or counterproductive, the gap between recognized harm and effective response seemingly unbridgeable. An international working group attempts to develop global standards for children's digital safety, but negotiations stall as nations disagree about what childhood means, what protection requires, and whether children's rights or parental authority should take precedence, the prospect of harmonized protection receding as cultural and political differences prove irreconcilable. A technology company announces a youth advisory council to inform product development, showcasing teenage participants in promotional materials, while internal documents reveal that the council's recommendations were overridden whenever they conflicted with engagement metrics, youth participation serving marketing rather than design. A child safety advocate argues for comprehensive protection that would effectively redesign how digital platforms operate, while a digital rights organization warns that proposed protections would surveil children, restrict their access to information, and subject their online lives to adult control that would harm them in different ways. The recognition that technology was not designed with children's interests in mind has grown widespread. What to do about it, who should decide, and whether the future holds genuine child-centered technology policy or merely the appearance of concern while fundamental dynamics remain unchanged is far from clear.
The Case for Transformative Child-Centered Policy
Advocates argue that current approaches to children's technology policy are inadequate to the harms children experience, that incremental improvements cannot address systemic problems, and that transformative change is both necessary and achievable if political will can be mobilized. From this view, the future must be fundamentally different from the present.
Children have been harmed at scale by technologies designed without their interests in mind. Social media platforms that optimize for engagement regardless of effect on developing minds, recommendation algorithms that push vulnerable youth toward harmful content, design patterns that exploit developmental vulnerabilities to maximize time on platform, and business models built on extracting attention from users who cannot recognize the extraction have produced documented mental health impacts, addiction patterns, and exploitation that constitute genuine crisis. The evidence of harm is sufficient to justify aggressive response.
Current regulatory frameworks are inadequate. COPPA's thirteen-year threshold, widely circumvented and developmentally arbitrary, fails to protect adolescents facing the most significant platform-related harms. Age verification that cannot be implemented without creating other privacy harms leaves protections unenforceable. Consent frameworks that assume capacity children do not have provide legal cover for practices that harm them. Self-regulation by platforms has demonstrably failed. The inadequacy of current approaches is not debatable.
Children's rights frameworks provide foundation for transformative policy. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes children's rights to protection, provision, and participation that technology policy should operationalize. General Comment No. 25 specifically addresses children's rights in the digital environment. International human rights frameworks create obligations that national policies should fulfill. Rights-based approaches provide principled foundation for child-centered technology policy.
Platform design can be required to serve children's interests. Age-appropriate design codes like the UK's require platforms to consider children's best interests in design decisions. Design requirements that prohibit features harmful to children, that mandate privacy-protective defaults for young users, and that restrict practices exploiting developmental vulnerabilities could transform how platforms affect children. Design regulation addresses problems at their source rather than attempting to protect children from harmful design after the fact.
Global standards could prevent regulatory arbitrage and extend protection universally. Children deserve protection regardless of where they live or where platforms are based. International coordination that establishes minimum standards, that prevents platforms from exploiting jurisdictional differences, and that ensures consistent protection would serve children better than fragmented national approaches.
Youth participation could produce policy that actually serves young people. Children and youth who experience technology's effects understand dimensions that adults miss. Meaningful participation that gives young people genuine voice in policy development, design decisions, and governance could produce approaches that serve their interests rather than adult assumptions about their interests.
From this perspective, child-centered technology policy future requires: recognition of current harm as crisis demanding response; rejection of incrementalism in favor of transformative change; rights-based frameworks that establish children's entitlements; design regulation that addresses problems at source; global standards that ensure universal protection; and meaningful youth participation in shaping the policies that affect them.
The Case for Cautious and Balanced Approaches
Others argue that well-intentioned child protection efforts risk unintended harms, that proposed solutions may not achieve their goals, and that balanced approaches respecting multiple interests will serve children better than aggressive intervention. From this view, caution about unintended consequences is not indifference to children's welfare but recognition that protection efforts themselves can cause harm.
Child protection rationales have historically justified excessive control. Restrictions on children's access to information, surveillance of their communications, and adult control over their digital lives have been defended as protection. But protection that denies children access to information relevant to their development, that subjects them to monitoring that adults would not accept, and that treats youth as incapable of any autonomous engagement may harm them differently than the harms protection addresses. The history of child protection includes paternalism that served adult comfort more than children's interests.
Proposed solutions may not work as intended. Age verification requirements create privacy risks and may not effectively identify children. Content restrictions may block beneficial information alongside harmful content. Design mandates may not produce intended behavioral changes. Platforms subject to restrictions may exclude children entirely rather than serving them appropriately. Policies that assume particular mechanisms will produce particular outcomes may find that digital environments respond in unexpected ways.
Diverse children have diverse needs that uniform policy cannot address. A sixteen-year-old researching LGBTQ+ identity needs different treatment than an eight-year-old playing games. Children in abusive households may need digital spaces free from parental monitoring. Youth activists may need access to political content that protection frameworks would restrict. Children with disabilities may rely on features that safety requirements would prohibit. Uniform protection that ignores diversity may harm children whose needs differ from assumed norms.
Global standards face legitimate disagreement about values. Different societies have different conceptions of childhood, different balances between children's autonomy and parental authority, and different views about appropriate content and expression. International standards that reflect particular cultural values may not serve children in contexts with different traditions. Harmonization that imposes one conception of childhood globally may itself be form of harm.
Youth participation can be meaningful or performative, and performative participation may be worse than honest exclusion. Young people included for legitimacy without actual influence experience manipulation. Token youth voice that cannot affect decisions teaches that participation is theater. If youth participation cannot be made genuine, honest acknowledgment of adult decision-making may be more respectful than false inclusion.
From this perspective, child-centered technology policy should: carefully weigh intended benefits against potential harms of interventions; test assumptions about what will work before scaling solutions; accommodate diverse children's diverse needs; respect legitimate value differences across contexts; ensure youth participation is genuine or acknowledge its absence; and maintain humility about the ability of policy to produce intended outcomes in complex systems.
The Design Regulation Possibility
Requiring technology design to consider children's interests offers possibility of addressing harms at their source rather than through after-the-fact restrictions.
From one view, design regulation is most promising child-centered policy approach. The UK's Age Appropriate Design Code, California's Age-Appropriate Design Code Act, and similar frameworks require platforms to design with children's best interests in mind. Requirements to disable features that harm children, to default to privacy-protective settings for young users, and to conduct child impact assessments before deploying new features could transform how technology affects children. Design regulation addresses the structural factors that produce harm.
From another view, design regulation faces significant challenges. Determining what design serves children's best interests involves contested value judgments. Regulators may lack technical understanding to specify appropriate design. Compliance assessment is difficult when design effects depend on context. Regulated platforms may respond by excluding children rather than redesigning. Design mandates may not produce intended outcomes.
Whether design regulation can effectively protect children or whether implementation challenges will defeat its promise shapes regulatory strategy.
The Algorithmic Accountability Dimension
Recommendation algorithms and automated systems significantly affect children's digital experiences, raising questions about algorithmic accountability in child-centered policy.
From one perspective, algorithmic accountability should be central to child-centered policy. Algorithms that push vulnerable youth toward harmful content, that exploit developmental vulnerabilities to maximize engagement, and that shape children's information environments in ways they cannot understand or control require regulation. Transparency requirements, impact assessments, and prohibitions on harmful algorithmic practices could address systems that currently operate without accountability.
From another perspective, algorithmic regulation is difficult to implement effectively. Algorithms are complex and their effects depend on context. Transparency requirements may not produce actionable understanding. Prohibitions on harmful practices require defining harm in ways that algorithms can be assessed against. Algorithmic accountability may be important aspiration but challenging regulatory practice.
Whether algorithmic accountability can be effectively implemented and what it should require shapes technical regulatory approaches.
The Age Verification Conundrum
Age-based protections require knowing users' ages, but verification methods raise significant concerns.
From one view, effective age verification is necessary for age-based protection to function. Self-reported age that children easily falsify provides no protection. Without verification, age-based restrictions cannot be enforced. Investment in privacy-preserving age verification technology could enable protections that current approaches cannot deliver.
From another view, age verification creates problems potentially worse than those it addresses. Collecting identification documents or biometric data to verify age creates privacy risks. Verification databases become breach targets. Verification requirements may exclude children from beneficial services. The cure may be worse than the disease.
Whether age verification can be implemented in ways that protect rather than undermine children shapes the viability of age-based regulatory approaches.
The Platform Accountability Models
Different models for holding platforms accountable for harms to children each have strengths and limitations.
Duty of care approaches would require platforms to exercise reasonable care toward child users, with liability for foreseeable harms. This creates incentive for safety investment but requires courts to determine what reasonable care means in novel contexts.
Specific prohibition approaches would identify and prohibit particular harmful practices. This provides clarity but may not capture novel harms and invites circumvention through practices not specifically prohibited.
Best interests requirements would obligate platforms to consider children's best interests in design and operation. This establishes appropriate orientation but leaves best interests determination contested.
Safety by design mandates would require platforms to demonstrate safety before deploying features affecting children. This prevents harm before it occurs but may slow beneficial innovation.
Whether any accountability model can effectively protect children and which model best balances protection against other considerations shapes platform governance.
The Parental Rights and Children's Rights Tension
Child-centered policy must navigate tension between parental authority over children and children's own rights and interests.
From one perspective, parental rights should be primary. Parents bear responsibility for their children and should have authority to make decisions about their children's digital engagement. Policy that overrides parental judgment substitutes government for family in ways that threaten parental authority.
From another perspective, children have rights independent of their parents. Some parental choices harm children. Children's rights to information, privacy, and participation deserve protection even against parents. Policy should protect children's interests, which may sometimes conflict with parental preferences.
From another perspective, the tension varies by context and age. Young children appropriately have decisions made by parents. Adolescents approaching adulthood have stronger claims to autonomous decision-making. Graduated approaches that shift from parental authority to youth autonomy as children develop may better reflect this complexity.
How child-centered policy balances parental rights against children's own rights shapes fundamental policy orientation.
The Free Expression Complications
Child protection measures may restrict expression in ways that raise significant concerns.
From one view, children's protection justifies some expression restrictions. Content that harms children should be restricted from reaching them regardless of adults' rights to access it. Children's developmental needs take precedence over abstract expression principles. Age-restricted content is established practice that can be extended to digital environments.
From another view, expression restrictions justified by child protection have historically been overbroad. Protecting children has been used to restrict content that children have legitimate interest in accessing. LGBTQ+ content, sexual health information, and political speech have been restricted under child protection rationales. Caution about protection rationales for expression restrictions is warranted.
From another view, children themselves have expression rights that protection frameworks may threaten. Youth political speech, creative expression, and social communication deserve protection. Frameworks treating children only as protection subjects rather than rights holders may restrict children's own expression inappropriately.
How to balance child protection against expression values, including children's own expression, shapes content regulation approaches.
The Mental Health and Design Connection
Evidence linking social media use to youth mental health concerns has driven policy interest, but the implications for policy design are contested.
From one perspective, mental health evidence justifies aggressive platform intervention. Research associating social media use with depression, anxiety, and self-harm among youth indicates platforms are causing serious harm. Design features that exploit psychological vulnerabilities should be prohibited. Engagement optimization that harms mental health should be restricted.
From another perspective, mental health evidence is more complex than it appears. Correlation does not establish causation. Some research is contested. Youth mental health concerns have multiple causes. Attributing mental health crisis to social media may oversimplify complex problems. Policy based on contested evidence may not address actual causes.
From another perspective, regardless of causation debates, platform design that exploits psychological vulnerabilities is problematic. Whether or not platforms cause mental health problems, designs intended to maximize engagement through manipulation deserve scrutiny. Precautionary approaches are appropriate given potential stakes.
Whether mental health evidence justifies aggressive intervention or whether caution about contested research is appropriate shapes regulatory confidence.
The Global Standards Aspiration
International coordination on children's digital protection could prevent regulatory arbitrage and extend protection globally, but faces significant obstacles.
From one view, global standards are essential and achievable. Children everywhere deserve protection. Platforms operating globally should meet consistent standards. International frameworks addressing children's rights in digital environments provide foundation. Coordination through bodies like UNICEF, the ITU, or dedicated new mechanisms could develop enforceable global standards.
From another view, global standards face insurmountable obstacles. Nations have different values regarding childhood, authority, and appropriate content. Enforcement of international standards depends on national implementation that may not occur. Lowest common denominator standards may provide less protection than stronger national approaches. The prospect of meaningful global standards may be illusory.
From another view, regional coordination may be more achievable than global coordination. EU-level standards, coordination among like-minded nations, or other regional approaches may produce meaningful harmonization without requiring global consensus.
Whether global standards are achievable and desirable, or whether national or regional approaches better serve children, shapes international engagement strategy.
The Youth Participation Imperative
Including young people in technology policy development reflects both rights principles and practical recognition that youth understand their digital lives better than adults.
From one perspective, youth participation is essential for legitimate and effective policy. Children affected by policies deserve voice in shaping them. Young people understand digital environments in ways adults do not. Participation that gives youth genuine influence produces better policy. Exclusion of young people from decisions affecting them violates their rights and produces worse outcomes.
From another perspective, youth participation faces significant challenges. Young people may not represent youth diversity. Participation may be tokenistic without genuine influence. Youth voice may be manipulated by adult interests. Children may not have capacity for policy deliberation requiring technical and legal understanding. Meaningful participation is harder than it appears.
From another perspective, youth participation should be one input among many rather than determinative. Young people's views matter but so do parents', educators', and others' views. Democratic policy-making involves multiple stakeholders. Youth participation should inform but not control outcomes.
How to design meaningful youth participation and what weight youth voice should receive shapes policy process design.
The Youth Advisory and Consultation Models
Various models for youth participation in technology governance have been implemented or proposed.
Youth advisory councils bring young people into ongoing consultation with platforms or regulators. These can provide sustained youth input but may become captured or tokenistic without safeguards ensuring genuine influence.
Youth impact assessments would require evaluating how policies or designs affect young people, potentially with youth involvement in assessment. These integrate youth perspectives into process but may not give youth direct voice.
Youth representation in governance would place young people in decision-making positions on boards or regulatory bodies. This provides direct authority but raises questions about selection and capacity.
Youth-led policy development would have young people design policy proposals that adult decision-makers would consider. This centers youth voice but may produce proposals that adults reject.
Which participation models can be made meaningful and what makes participation genuine rather than performative shapes institutional design.
The Enforcement Challenge
Child-centered technology policy is only as effective as its enforcement, and enforcement faces significant obstacles.
From one view, enforcement mechanisms must be strengthened for policy to be effective. Fines that constitute cost of doing business do not deter. Enforcement resources that cannot keep pace with violation scope cannot protect children. Stronger penalties, better resourced regulators, and streamlined enforcement procedures are necessary.
From another view, enforcement of digital policy faces inherent challenges. Platforms can change practices faster than enforcement can respond. Jurisdictional complexity limits enforcement reach. Technical verification of compliance may be difficult. Enforcement limitations may be structural rather than simply resource constraints.
Whether enforcement can be made effective or whether policy ambitions must be scaled to enforcement realities shapes regulatory design.
The Innovation and Safety Balance
Child-centered policy must balance protection against potential costs to beneficial innovation.
From one perspective, safety should take precedence over innovation. Technologies that harm children should not be deployed regardless of their innovative nature. The burden should be on innovators to demonstrate safety rather than on children to bear risks of unsafe innovation. Innovation that harms children is not beneficial innovation.
From another perspective, overly restrictive policy may prevent beneficial innovation. Technologies that could help children may not be developed if regulatory burden is too high. Children themselves may be harmed by restrictions that prevent beneficial services from reaching them. Balance between safety and innovation serves children.
From another perspective, the innovation argument is often deployed to resist appropriate regulation. Platforms have claimed that any regulation threatens innovation. Skepticism about innovation claims is appropriate when they are used to resist child protection.
How to balance innovation concerns against safety requirements shapes regulatory stringency.
The Data Protection Foundation
Strong data protection provides foundation for child-centered technology policy, limiting what can be collected about and done with children's information.
From one view, data protection is necessary but insufficient for child-centered policy. Data minimization, purpose limitation, and consent requirements reduce some harms. But data protection alone does not address design that harms children through mechanisms other than data collection. Comprehensive child-centered policy builds on data protection but extends beyond it.
From another view, enhanced data protection specifically for children could address many concerns. Prohibiting collection of children's data for advertising, requiring deletion of children's data, and restricting profiling of minors would address core harms. Data protection may be more achievable than broader regulation.
Whether enhanced data protection is sufficient or whether broader child-centered policy is necessary shapes regulatory scope.
The Commercial Model Critique
Some argue that fundamental problems stem from commercial models based on attention extraction and data exploitation, which cannot serve children's interests regardless of regulatory overlay.
From one perspective, advertising-based business models are inherently problematic for children. Models dependent on maximizing engagement will always push toward exploitation of attention. Regulation that attempts to constrain advertising-based platforms while leaving the model intact addresses symptoms rather than causes. Alternative models, potentially publicly supported or nonprofit, would serve children better.
From another perspective, commercial models can be regulated to serve children appropriately. Advertising to children can be restricted while allowing advertising-based services. Design requirements can constrain harmful engagement optimization. Changing the fundamental model is neither necessary nor achievable.
Whether commercial models can serve children or whether alternative models are necessary shapes policy ambition.
The Public Infrastructure Alternative
Some propose public digital infrastructure designed for children's interests rather than relying on commercial platforms.
From one view, public alternatives could provide digital spaces designed for children's benefit without commercial pressures. Public social media, educational platforms, and digital services for children could prioritize development and safety over engagement and profit. Public investment in child-centered digital infrastructure is worthy policy goal.
From another view, public digital infrastructure faces significant obstacles. Government-run platforms raise concerns about state control of children's communication. Public services may not attract users accustomed to commercial platform features. Government capacity to build and maintain competitive digital services is questionable. Public alternatives may be neither achievable nor desirable.
Whether public digital infrastructure is viable alternative or whether policy must work within commercial landscape shapes intervention strategy.
The Developmental Approach
Child-centered policy could be structured around developmental stages rather than arbitrary age thresholds.
From one perspective, developmentally informed policy would better serve children's actual needs. Young children, school-age children, early adolescents, and older adolescents have different capacities and needs. Policy calibrated to developmental stages rather than arbitrary ages would be more appropriate.
From another perspective, developmental stages are not precise and vary among individuals. Policy requiring platforms to assess developmental stage rather than age would be impractical. Age-based thresholds, while imperfect, provide workable basis for policy that developmental approaches may not.
Whether developmentally informed approaches can be operationalized or whether age-based thresholds are necessary practical compromise shapes regulatory framework.
The Rights-Based Framework
Grounding child-centered technology policy in children's rights provides principled foundation for policy development.
From one view, rights frameworks provide essential normative foundation. The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes children's entitlements that policy should realize. Rights to protection, provision, and participation inform what child-centered policy should include. Rights-based approaches provide principled basis for demanding policy change.
From another view, rights frameworks may be too abstract to guide specific policy. What children's rights require in specific technological contexts is contested. Rights rhetoric may not translate into operational requirements. Practical policy development may need more specific guidance than rights principles provide.
Whether rights frameworks can effectively guide child-centered policy or whether more specific approaches are needed shapes policy development methodology.
The Multi-Stakeholder Governance
Technology governance increasingly involves multi-stakeholder processes bringing together government, industry, civil society, and affected communities.
From one perspective, multi-stakeholder governance could improve child-centered policy. Including platforms, children's advocates, parents, researchers, and youth themselves in governance processes could produce more informed and legitimate policy. Multi-stakeholder approaches address limitations of government-only regulation.
From another perspective, multi-stakeholder governance may be captured by industry participants with greatest resources. Processes that appear inclusive may serve powerful interests. Government regulation may protect children better than governance processes where platforms have significant voice.
Whether multi-stakeholder governance serves children's interests or whether it enables industry capture shapes governance structure.
The Research Investment
Evidence about what works in child-centered technology policy is limited, raising questions about research investment.
From one view, research investment should be priority. Evidence about platform effects on children, about effectiveness of interventions, and about implementation challenges would inform better policy. Mandating platform data access for independent research would enable understanding that platform opacity currently prevents.
From another view, research takes time that children facing harm now do not have. Waiting for perfect evidence delays action. Precautionary approaches that act on available evidence are appropriate given stakes. Research should continue but should not delay warranted intervention.
Whether policy should await stronger evidence or whether action on available evidence is appropriate shapes intervention timing.
The Regulatory Experimentation
Different jurisdictions are implementing different approaches to child-centered technology policy, creating natural experiments.
From one view, regulatory experimentation is valuable. Different approaches in different jurisdictions will produce evidence about what works. Learning from various experiments can inform improved policy. The diversity of approaches is feature rather than bug.
From another view, regulatory experimentation means some children receive less protection than others. Children's protection should not depend on jurisdictional accident. Harmonization toward best approaches should be goal rather than ongoing experimentation.
Whether regulatory diversity should be welcomed as experimentation or whether harmonization toward consistent protection should be priority shapes international coordination.
The Implementation Gap
Even strong child-centered policy frameworks may not produce intended outcomes if implementation is inadequate.
From one view, implementation should be primary focus. Existing frameworks may be adequate if properly implemented. Resources for implementation, capacity building, and enforcement attention would produce better outcomes than new frameworks that face the same implementation challenges.
From another view, implementation gaps reflect inadequate frameworks. Frameworks that cannot be implemented may need redesign. Implementation challenges may indicate that approaches are wrong, not just that execution is weak.
Whether implementation of existing frameworks or development of new frameworks should be priority shapes reform strategy.
The Technology Company Responsibility
What technology companies should be required to do versus what they should do voluntarily remains contested.
From one view, voluntary corporate action is insufficient. Platforms have repeatedly failed to protect children when doing so conflicted with business interests. Legal requirements with meaningful enforcement are necessary. Corporate responsibility requires legal mandate.
From another view, legal requirements cannot address everything and may be counterproductive. Corporations can act faster than regulation can mandate. Some corporate responsibility involves judgment that legal requirements cannot capture. Both legal requirements and voluntary action have roles.
Whether corporate responsibility requires legal mandate or whether voluntary action has meaningful role shapes regulatory strategy.
The Emerging Technology Anticipation
Child-centered policy must address not only current technologies but technologies not yet deployed.
From one view, anticipatory governance should address emerging technologies before they affect children. AI companions, virtual reality environments, brain-computer interfaces, and technologies not yet imagined will raise child-centered policy questions. Developing frameworks before technologies are deployed could prevent harms rather than responding after they occur.
From another view, anticipating technological development is difficult and anticipatory regulation may be wrong. Technologies may develop differently than expected. Regulation designed for imagined technologies may not fit actual developments. Adaptive frameworks that respond to actual technologies may be more appropriate than anticipatory approaches.
Whether policy should anticipate emerging technologies or respond to actual developments shapes temporal orientation.
The Platform Interoperability Possibility
Requirements for platform interoperability could give families more choice and reduce platform power over children's digital experiences.
From one view, interoperability requirements would serve child-centered policy goals. Families locked into platforms because children's social connections are there cannot choose safer alternatives. Interoperability that enables moving to different platforms while maintaining connections would give families meaningful choice. Platform competition enabled by interoperability could drive safety improvements.
From another view, interoperability creates its own challenges. Interoperable systems may have security vulnerabilities. Privacy protection across interoperable platforms is complex. Interoperability requirements may be difficult to implement and enforce.
Whether interoperability serves child-centered goals or creates new problems shapes platform regulation.
The Transparency Requirements
Transparency about platform practices, algorithmic operation, and effects on children could inform policy and enable accountability.
From one view, transparency is essential foundation for child-centered policy. Platforms that operate opaquely cannot be held accountable. Requirements for transparency about design choices, algorithmic effects, and child safety practices would enable informed regulation and public accountability.
From another view, transparency alone does not produce change. Platforms may disclose information that no one acts on. Transparency requirements may create compliance burden without improving outcomes. Transparency serves accountability only if accountability mechanisms exist to use disclosed information.
Whether transparency requirements can effectively support child-centered policy or whether they are insufficient without other measures shapes regulatory design.
The Canadian Context
Canada is developing child-centered technology policy within frameworks shaped by federal and provincial jurisdiction, Charter rights, and Canadian values.
The Online Harms Act proposes new regulatory framework for harmful content including protections for children. Privacy law modernization debates include consideration of enhanced protections for minors. Provincial education systems address digital safety with varying approaches.
Canada's position allows learning from regulatory developments elsewhere while developing approaches suited to Canadian context. Charter considerations shape how child protection can be balanced against expression rights.
From one perspective, Canada should move aggressively to implement strong child-centered technology policy, learning from international best practices and developing Canadian approaches.
From another perspective, Canada should proceed carefully, learning from other jurisdictions' experiences including unintended consequences, before implementing potentially problematic approaches.
How Canada develops child-centered technology policy shapes protection for Canadian children and potentially influences international approaches.
The Future Trajectory
The future of child-centered technology policy remains uncertain, with different possible trajectories.
One trajectory involves increasing protection. Growing evidence of harm, public concern, and political attention drive increasingly strong regulatory response. Platforms become subject to comprehensive requirements. Children's digital experiences are transformed by regulatory intervention.
Another trajectory involves regulatory failure. Proposed measures prove unworkable or are blocked by legal challenges and industry opposition. Platforms continue operating largely as they have. Child-centered policy remains aspiration rather than reality.
Another trajectory involves transformation. Technological change, new business models, or social shifts change the landscape in ways that make current policy debates obsolete. Child-centered concerns are addressed not through regulation of current platforms but through emergence of different digital environments.
Which trajectory materializes depends on political, economic, technological, and social factors whose interaction cannot be predicted.
The Fundamental Reorientation Question
Child-centered technology policy ultimately raises question of whether technology should be fundamentally reoriented to serve children's interests rather than extract value from their attention.
From one view, fundamental reorientation is necessary. Technologies designed to maximize engagement will always tend toward exploitation. Incremental regulation cannot address fundamental misalignment between commercial interests and children's interests. Policy should aim to transform the technology landscape rather than modestly constrain current practices.
From another view, fundamental reorientation is neither achievable nor necessary. Policy can constrain harmful practices within existing frameworks. Technological and commercial systems cannot be transformed through regulation. Achievable improvements within current systems serve children better than aspirations for transformation that will not occur.
Whether child-centered technology policy should aim for fundamental reorientation or work within existing systems shapes ambition and strategy.
The Question
If technology was designed for adult purposes by companies optimizing for engagement and revenue rather than children's wellbeing, and if the harms to children from these design choices have become increasingly documented and concerning, can policy effectively reorient technology to serve children's interests, or will commercial pressures, implementation challenges, and political obstacles mean that child-centered policy remains aspiration rather than reality regardless of the frameworks developed? When efforts to protect children risk restricting their expression, subjecting them to surveillance, denying them access to information and connection they value, and treating them as incapable of agency they are developing, how should policy balance protection against autonomy, and whose judgment should determine where that balance lies when children, parents, advocates, platforms, and governments may all have different views? And if meaningful youth participation in policy development is both rights imperative and practical necessity for policy that serves young people rather than adult assumptions about them, yet participation risks tokenism that provides legitimacy without influence, how can youth voice be genuinely incorporated into policy processes, what weight should it receive relative to other stakeholders, and whether the future of child-centered technology policy will be shaped by young people or merely claimed to be shaped by them while adults continue making decisions that affect children without truly including them in the choices being made?