This report (February, 2025) examines the complex interplay of personalization, behavioral monitoring and targeted advertising in children's digital lives, highlighting opportunities and risks. The report highlights benefits, risks and recommendations for several key sectors:
- Education: Personalisation in education enables tailored learning opportunities, increases student engagement and provides targeted support for children with disabilities. However, tracking children without their consent and a lack of data protection measures can threaten privacy and exacerbate existing digital inequalities.
- Health and wellbeing: Personalised health services contribute to early detection of mental health problems, enable timely intervention and improve access to issues such as sexual health. At the same time, there are risks such as insufficient self-regulation, the spread of inaccurate information, internet addiction, exposure to harmful content and lack of protection of sensitive health data.
- Safe spaces for marginalized communities: Through personalisation, marginalised groups such as LGBTQIA+ youth or children in abusive situations can better connect and access supportive content and safe digital spaces. However, a lack of safeguards can lead to harassment, misinformation and misuse of platforms.
- Age estimation services: Accurate age identification can help provide age-appropriate content to children and improve parental control.
However, there are privacy concerns as such systems often collect large amounts of personal data and are not always sufficiently secure. - Social media: Personalised social media platforms help users to express themselves, build community, and monetise opportunities from their talent.
However, they also harbour risks such as data misuse, targeted advertising for manipulation, addictive behaviour and psychological stress due to peer pressure, distorted self-image and filter bubbles. - Gaming: Monitoring gaming behaviour can promote a fair gaming environment and prevent problematic behaviour. However, there is a risk of gaming addiction, commercial exploitation and misuse of personal data.
- Music and podcasts: Personalised recommendations in music and podcasts enrich user experiences but inadequate personalisation may narrow exposure and pose privacy risks.
Weitere Informationen und Lösungsansätze zu den Herausforderungen finden Sie im Bericht. Dieser kann hier heruntergeladen werden.