New Delhi: The United Nations has delivered a cautionary message to governments and technology companies: children are being harmed online not because digital risks are unavoidable, but because platforms have been deliberately designed in ways that prioritise engagement and profit over safety.
As countries around the world rush to impose age-based restrictions on social media, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Volker Türk, has cautioned that blanket bans are unlikely to solve the problem. Instead, he argues, policymakers must focus on the underlying design choices that expose children to harm in the first place.
The warning accompanies the release of Getting Children’s Safety Online Right, a new guidance brief from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), which lays out a framework for protecting children in digital spaces while safeguarding their rights.
“Online harms to kids’ safety, privacy and wellbeing result from design choices and business practices that undermine safety, including addictive design features such as infinite scroll, autoplay, and persistent notifications,” Türk said, arguing that digital platforms must be held accountable for the environments they create.
The intervention comes amid a growing global push for age-based social media restrictions. Australia barred children under 16 from major platforms in December 2025, while Indonesia and Malaysia have adopted similar measures. More than a dozen other countries are considering comparable laws.
However, Türk warned that age bans are often easy to circumvent and may inadvertently drive children towards less regulated and potentially more dangerous online spaces. “Simply limiting access to platforms that remain unsafe cannot stand as the endpoint,” he said.
According to the report, regulators should place responsibility squarely on technology companies by requiring safer digital environments by design rather than expecting children and parents to shoulder the burden of managing risks. It says addictive design features and aggressive online marketing aimed at children should be addressed through rights-respecting business practices.
Rights Before Restrictions
The report argues that children’s rights must form the foundation of any digital regulation. It stresses that rights enjoyed offline apply equally online, including the rights to privacy, access to information, expression and participation.
“Effective regulation needs to be grounded in children’s rights,” says the report. “This means an approach that takes account of children’s evolving capacities and their rights to access information, express themselves, and to participate.”
As AI tools and conversational chatbots become increasingly embedded in children’s online experiences, experts stress the importance of evidence-based policymaking. (Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash)
One of the central concerns identified by the report is the collection and exploitation of children's personal data. It recommends that maximum privacy protections become the default setting and calls for an end to the micro-targeting of children for commercial purposes.
“Where data is collected, it must be minimized, purpose-limited, and subject to the highest safeguards, with children and parents afforded genuine control over how personal data is used,” the report states.
The guidance also calls for mandatory child rights impact assessments before companies launch new tools, features or major platform changes. Such assessments should be part of broader human rights due diligence processes and should include public reporting and penalties for non-compliance, according to the report.
Peggy Hicks, OHCHR Director of Thematic Engagement and Special Procedures, said the technology industry now faces a clear choice. “Change how their platforms are designed and operated to better protect children’s rights and safety – or be forced to do so through increasingly restrictive legislation and regulatory fines,” she told reporters in Geneva.
The report further warns that age-verification systems, increasingly viewed by governments as a solution to online harms, carry significant privacy risks if not tightly regulated. Any such systems, it says, should be transparent, non-discriminatory and subject to human rights scrutiny.
Children Must Matter
Beyond regulation and corporate accountability, the report insists that children themselves should play a direct role in shaping digital policy.
“Children have the right to be heard, including on how digital environments are designed, governed and regulated, and must have a say in shaping the digital world that shapes their lives,” the report says. “Children should be consulted in regulatory processes relating to them, and their views on the impact of regulations once implemented should be collected and meaningfully considered,” it adds.
The guidance also highlights the need for greater transparency from technology companies regarding content moderation systems, recommendation algorithms and design features that affect children. Independent oversight, regular reporting and meaningful legal consequences are necessary to ensure accountability, it says.
As AI tools and conversational chatbots become increasingly embedded in children’s online experiences, Hicks stressed the importance of evidence-based policymaking. “We need to collect the evidence and adapt quickly to what we learn,” she said.
Governments should avoid relying solely on broad access restrictions and instead pursue measures that tackle the root causes of online harm, says the report. “These steps, taken together, provide a pathway for regulation that enhances protection of children online while avoiding some of the pitfalls that arise in this complex space.”
It also rejects the notion that digital harms are an unavoidable consequence of modern technology. “Online harms to children are not innate or inevitable,” it says.
(Cover photo by Budi Gustaman on Unsplash)