Children’s Right To Privacy And Data Protection: Does the Article on Conditions Applicable to Child’s Consent Under the GDPR Tackle the Challenges of the Digital Era or Create Further Confusion?
Abstract
Technology and the Internet have become significant and irreversible elements of modern life. Young people are particularly active users of digital services. In recent years, the number of young Internet users has grown significantly. They tend to stay online for longer periods, and they are starting younger. While these technologies offer great opportunities and can improve daily life, every major beneficial development also has downsides. Many concerns have been raised over the emergence of internet-connected toys and wearables along with other smart devices and applications that were not necessarily developed for children’s use. Leaving aside the visible risks such as sexual abuse, insomnia, obesity, low self-esteem or addiction, there are other hidden risks such as privacy invasions and data protection violations. These occur because children using the Internet, in effect, data subjects whose information is shared collected and processed, without their knowledge of or any understanding of potential consequences. Parents may be equally unaware of the privacy and security compromises their children are making and of all the possible impacts of data processing, data linkage, and data aggregation that may affect their rights and freedoms.
Children are exposed to these privacy-invasive digital risks partly because of the increasingly commercialised nature of information society services and the age of Big Data. The European Union has given special attention to data protection concerns arising from digital services offered to children, incorporating specific provisions into the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This article examines the newly incorporated requirements and concepts relating to child’s consent under the GDPR and analyses whether its protection is adequate or reflects the cognitive appraisal of a child compared to an adult.
In addition, it sets out the requirements for obtaining valid consent for data processing from the child or parent and then briefly addresses the challenges this process encounters in practice. Given the complexities in implementing and enforcing these provisions, the article asks whether these requirements are sufficient to ensure children’s rights and freedoms are protected. It evaluates whether the Regulation and its principles are failing to keep pace with the changing nature of technology.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
EJLT is an open access journal, aiming to disseminate academic work and perspectives as widely as possible to the benefit of the author and the author’s readers. It is the assumption of the EJLT that authors who publish in the journal wish their work to be available as freely and as widely as possible through the open access publishing channel.
Authors who publish with EJLT will retain copyright and moral rights in the underlying work but will grant all users the rights to copy, store and print for non-commercial use copies of their work. Commercial mirroring may also be carried out with the consent of the journal. The work must remain as published – without redaction or editing – and must clearly state the identity of the author and the originating EJLT url of the article. Any commercial use of the author’s work - apart from mirroring - requires the permission of the author and any aspects of the article which are the property of EJLT (e.g. typographical format) requires permission from EJLT.
Authors can sometimes become no longer contactable (through, for example, death or retirement). If this occurs, any rights in the work will pass to the European Journal of Law and Technology which will continue to make the work available in as wide a manner as possible to achieve the aims of open access and ensuring that an author's work continues to be available. An author - or their estate - can recover these rights from EJLT by providing contact information.
The European Journal of Law and Technology holds rights in format, publication and dissemination.
EJLT, as a non-commercial organisation - which receives donations to allow it to continue publishing – must retain information on reader access to journal articles. This means that we will not give permission to mirror the journal unless we can be provided with full details as to reader access to each and every journal article. We prefer and encourage deep linking rather than mirroring. Encouragement is thus given for all users – commercial and non-commercial – to provide indexes and links to articles in the EJLT where the index or link points to the location of the article on the EJLT server, rather than to stored copies on other servers.
Please contact the European Journal of Law and Technology if you are in any doubt as to what this statement of use covers.