Keeping children safe

We live in a divided world, where disagreement and conflict is rife. One thing we can, hopefully, all agree on is that children should be protected from harm. We no doubt have differing views on how to protect them. In this column to mark this year’s Data Protection Day the Bailiwick’s Data Protection Commissioner, Emma Martins, outlines one approach.

“We cannot build a sustainable future unless we are able to ensure children can grow up safe and secure from violence and harm, including in a digital environment.” Dr Howard Taylor

It can be hard to contemplate harms when they relate to the online world. We tend (both legally and culturally) to consider harms as existing only in the physical world. But the world has changed.

And as Michelle Donelan MP (UK Secretary of State for Digital, Media, Culture and Sport) stated in an open letter to parents explaining the need for the UK’s Online Safety Bill there is an urgent need to “protect children from harmful and inappropriate content, from cyberbullying and pornography to posts that encourage eating disorders or depict violence”.

Education and awareness around the harms that can occur when personal data (information/facts/opinions about you) is mishandled is vital. So too is individuals understanding their rights and expecting them to be upheld as this positively influences individual organisations and the wider culture. There are also reputational benefits for our jurisdiction if we have a culture that supports good data governance.

The Bailiwick’s data protection law acknowledges the role of education and awareness. It places a statutory duty on those of us at The Office of the Data Protection Authority (ODPA), the independent data protection regulator, to promote public awareness around the processing of our personal data. The law also highlights how important this is in respect of children and young people.

The protection of personal data involving children is inextricably linked to questions of online safety so we cannot ignore it, nor simply look at enforcement as an effective strategy. So - what is needed must be a community endeavour where we all, in whatever capacity, be it parent, teacher, consumer, elected representative, public and private sector – have a role. Perhaps more importantly, we all have a responsibility. At the ODPA we want to ensure that our education and awareness strategies include specific programmes of work targeting the Bailiwick’s younger generation. Anyone with young people in their lives will know only too well the challenges of either side feeling listened to and heard. Data protection is a hard enough sell to adults, so communicating it to children in a way that is useful and meaningful takes careful thought and the right people.

We have two objectives:
1. Ensuring that children are supported in understanding and exercising their rights and encouraged to make good, safe decisions online.
2. With so many incredible opportunities presented by technology, we want the next generation to harness them from a place of knowledge and responsibility. If we want to embed ethical principles into new technologies, we must do that from the beginning.

There are three aspects to engaging with the younger generation: firstly the children themselves; secondly, how to support them; and thirdly people to make this happen.
Let’s take each aspect in turn:

• Firstly, since launching our activities with children in November 2020 we have seen first-hand the interest and engagement they have in the world of data. They are not jaded and face challenges unthinkable to most of the older generation. They can understand that data protection law seeks to put human being’s rights at the centre of decision-making.
• Secondly, we have worked hard considering how best to support younger people in the challenges they face. We have developed activities, videos, posters and even ‘merch’ (our ‘Data Bears’ are popular even with adults!). This all forms part of Project Bijou Seeds – our outreach programme for young people. Its aim is to positively engage children and young people in: how valuable their personal data is; why it must be protected; and why we must treat others’ data well too.
• Thirdly, our communications team have experience in teaching, journalism, content creation, and science communication. The latter skill involves communicating complex ideas in a way that a non-expert can understand, an essential skill for working with children. Our comms team are also parents to school age children so have personal experience of the issues, and a personal stake in doing their jobs well.

At the beginning of 2022, after two years of running sessions in schools ourselves, we recognised that partnering with the Youth Commission could take our outreach work further – increasing its reach, improving its effectiveness, and sharpening the focus on the young people it seeks to serve.

One of the most wonderful things about working in a smaller jurisdiction is the way we can engage with our community. The work we are doing to support that community, especially the younger generation, is something we take very seriously. We have an ethical as well as legal duty to build a culture of respect and protection around personal data. To do nothing is to tacitly accept that children and young people will be exposed to pervasive and profoundly real harms.