The Alannah & Madeline Foundation strongly endorses the introduction today of new legislation designed to strengthen privacy protections for all Australians, including children and young people.
This comes at a time of significant public debate about children’s online safety and significant threats and online harms posed by pervasive and commercially driven business models.
CEO of the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, Sarah Davies AM said today’s announcement is a major step in the right direction.
“A Children’s Online Privacy Code will make digital environments safer for children and young people,” said Ms Davies.
“A well-designed, resourced and enforceable Children’s Online Privacy Code will have a massive impact on protecting children from intrusive practices and safeguard their experiences online.
“Digital technologies are ever-present in children’s lives. By the ages 10-13, more than half of Australian children have their own phones, almost half have a gaming account, and one-third are on social media. Children use ‘edtech’ products in school and ‘smart devices’ at home.
“New technologies bring many benefits, but they also create new problems which laws must evolve to address.”
“At present, when children go online they enter a ‘data economy’, where their personal information is collected, analysed and monetized – and in some cases exploited – on a vast scale. This data can be used to target children with personalised advertising, manipulate their behaviour, and exploit their vulnerabilities,” Ms Davies added.
“The commercial hunger for data has led to digital products and services which are ‘risky by design’, with features meant to maximise user engagement and data handling – this includes low-default privacy settings, location tracking, frequent notifications, ‘the infinite scroll’, weak age-gating of adult products like pornography, and recommender systems that encourage contact with strangers and extreme content.”
“This situation exposes children to many risks, including harms to their concentration, mood and sleep; contact with strangers; viewing of age-inappropriate content; and serious breaches of their privacy.”
“A well-designed Children’s Online Privacy Code would protect children from these multiple harms, for example, by requiring digital platforms to set children's accounts to ‘private’ by default and stop the commercial targeting of content, contacts and personalised marketing to children,” Ms Davies said.
The Alannah & Madeline Foundation strongly supports the Government’s commitment to online safety for all Australians, including children who are the most vulnerable to exploitation.
We welcome the news that the Code’s development will be led by the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner and backed by meaningful funding of $3 million over three years.
To be effective, the Code must apply to all online services likely to be accessed by children and align with the respected UK Children’s Code, as proposed in the Privacy Act review report.
We call upon industry and the wider community to give their full support to the Code’s development and implementation. Together, we can create a digital world that is safe, respectful and empowering for all Australians – and especially children.
