Digital youth: Honor ALL their rights
This is a pivotal year for children’s online safety and human rights. One important reason is the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s call for public comments to help it develop the first General...
View ArticleSpark Change: The book taking (digital) citizenship to a whole new level
Olivia Van Ledtje, just now 12, tells the story of giving a talk in a western Massachusetts elementary school auditorium that was packed with students and teachers from three school communities – when...
View Article4 resolutions for 2020, a pivotal year for Internet safety
“Until now, protecting children on the Web has primarily meant keeping them off it,” wrote NPR’s Anya Kamenetz at TechnologyReview.com. Exactly. That has been the direct experience of children all over...
View ArticleYoung artists & activists wrapping 2020 in light
So many of us lost heart, our voices, our strength at different points in the past year, and possibly none more than young people. “Since the start of the pandemic, mental health-related emergency...
View ArticleYouth rights’ digital upgrade: True cause for celebration
There is so much to celebrate about General Comment 25, which for the first time spells out what digital human rights look like for people worldwide – people under 18, technically, but in many ways for...
View ArticleApple & the child online safety challenge
2nd important update Sept. 19: As if in direct response to the open letter from privacy activists around the world, the WeProtect Global Alliance published their own statement saying Apple must not...
View Article‘Playful by Design,’ a landmark report
What better subject to zoom in on during the holiday season than play? I’ve written a lot on the subject, here, through the years but, in a way, this is Part 4 of a series I started in 2009 (here are...
View ArticleGlobal network of Net safety regulators: Let’s think on this
In my last, pre-FOSI, post about this social media meltdown I told you I’d report back about what people would say about it at the conference. But there was actually very little said – only,...
View ArticleThen there’s the flip side of ChatGPT
ChatGPT: What about the kids? Anybody heard of "safety by design"?! The whole public conversation about generative AI, search chatbots, the great Bing-Google race and even the creepiness has all been...
View ArticleGame-changer: Child rights-by-design
Even though the United States is the only country on the planet that hasn’t ratified the nearly 34-year-old UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, US-based companies that serve kids and teens around...
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