5Rights responds to the Online Harms White Paper

July 2019

5Rights welcomes the importance that the White Paper ascribes to promoting the welfare of children and young people in particular, and we are pleased to see proposals that would hold companies to account for how effectively they uphold their published rules. However, we express concern that the more ‘everyday’ harms faced by children online are not given sufficient attention in the White Paper, and that in failing to take a truly risk-based approach, the proposals may fall short of driving a culture of safety-by-design.

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5Rights responds to the draft Age Appropriate Design Code

May 2019

5Rights Foundation has submitted its response to the Information Commissioner’s consultation on the draft Age Appropriate Design Code. 

The draft Code breaks new ground in setting out the specific protections that children merit in relation to their personal data, and it successfully challenges the status quo in which children’s presence is not accounted for by the online services they use.

We congratulate the Information Commissioner’s Office for its work to date and look forward to welcoming the final version of the Code when it enters into force. 

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The Age Appropriate Design Code: “A new deal between children and the tech sector”

April 2019

The Information Commissioner, Elizabeth Denham CBE, has now launched a draft of the Age Appropriate Design Code for consultation. The consultation is open until Friday 31st May.

The Age Appropriate Design Code is the first of its kind anywhere in the world and sets out the specific protections that children require for their data. It will redress the balance between the needs and safety of children and the commercial interests of online services.

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5Rights Foundation: Towards an Internet Safety Strategy

January 2019

The inventors of the digital world imagined an environment in which all users would be equal, but in fact, 1/3rd of users globally and 1/5th of users in the UK are children; children who are growing up in an environment that systematically fails to recognise their age, meet their needs or uphold their rights.

In this paper, 5Rights Foundation proposes seven pillars upon which the Government’s Internet Safety Strategy could be built: parity of protection, design standards, accountability, enforcement, leadership, education and evidence-based interventions, in order to make a digital world fit for children and childhood.

Read our report