At least since 2021, when a former Meta employee leaked internal documents, known as the Facebook Papers, which proved the company was aware of the harmful effects of Facebook and Instagram on teenagers’ mental health. Those documents also revealed that Meta allocated 87 per cent of its budget for detecting disinformation on Facebook to English-language content, even though only nine per cent of the platform’s users spoke that language.

The fact that such situations keep recurring shows the platforms are incapable of regulating themselves, however much they insist their technology is too complex for others to regulate, and highlights the weakness of the international regulations that should be reining them in.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that most technology corporations originated in the USA, a country with minimal regulation and the only United Nations member that has not ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

But beyond the USA, children’s rights tend to be sidelined in the design of digital technologies worldwide. In the European Union (EU), for example, the fight against child sexual exploitation is framed as a false dilemma: to protect children, initiatives such as Chat Control propose scanning everyone’s private messages, at the expense of their privacy. And while children’s rights are invoked to justify such surveillance, specific and widespread cases of violations of those rights, such as the Epstein files, are not moving forward, despite the evidence contained in thousands of emails from individuals linked to governments and tech companies.

Even so, there has been progress. The EU has invested heavily in raising awareness and regulation. Its most influential piece of legislation is the General Data Protection Regulation, which enables people to exercise their right to privacy and make decisions about their personal data.

The EU regulates the misleading design of some platforms, which resort, for instance, to creating a false sense of urgency to manipulate purchases or retain customers. The sheer size of its market extends these rules beyond Europe. Many non-European companies end up adopting these laws to be able to access European consumer markets.

The EU also protects whistleblowers who leak internal documents to expose breaches of legislation by organisations, forcing member states to provide secure channels and legal protection.

Civil society and the public have been instrumental in defending digital and children’s rights. They have driven forward data protection laws and exposed malpractice and abuses by tech companies and governments.

But their work is becoming increasingly difficult. As digital systems operate like black boxes, it’s becoming ever harder to access information, and the powers that be dismiss and marginalise critical investigation by civil society.

That’s why we need broader communities that distribute responsibilities and resources more effectively and can develop better technologies with fewer harmful effects. This need grows when companies and states turn a blind eye. But it’s a task that requires resources that are currently scarce and poorly distributed. Far more money is allocated to designing and deploying AI than to monitoring its consequences. Civil society needs sustained funding so investigating platform design ceases to be voluntary, precarious and dangerous work.

We must avoid the surveillance model that is creeping into schools and families. It’s a multi-billion-dollar industry that, in the name of efficiency and security, collects data through CCTV cameras, facial recognition, internet monitoring and course management platforms. In the Brazilian state of Paraná, facial recognition software developed in Europe scans hundreds of thousands of students every day to take attendance. France and Sweden have banned this technology, but Europe doesn’t control its exports, which end up being used in countries where protection is weaker.

The alternative is to balance the three pillars of the Convention on the Rights of the Child – participation, protection and provision – in digital environments. We need human rights-based standards that are well-known and easy to exercise at any age and in any social context. Developing these standards requires creating spaces for dialogue across generations and across all sectors, including civil society organisations, governments, international organisations, the public, research centres and technology companies.

There’s also a need for critical digital education. It’s not enough simply to teach people how to use technology. We must help children and young people understand how it works, who it benefits and what rights are at stake. This way, protection ceases to fall solely on families and children, as is the case today, and becomes a shared responsibility.