The G7 Digital and Technology Ministers (Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America) have, for the first time, defined a common set of principles for a safer and more secure digital space for minors. They call on digital service providers to use these principles as a guide for the design of their services and to work with the necessary partners to implement them. In order to ensure that the protection of children’s rights online is evidence-based, the ministers emphasise that minors, as well as their parents, should be involved in this process and commit to further strengthening international cooperation to address risks to children and young people in the digital environment.
An overview of the seven principles:
- Effective age assurance is key to ensure a safer, more secure, and age-appropriate experience for minors.
- Protect minors from harms online through safety by design approaches such as protective and by default settings, including parental control tools, which prevent minors from being exposed to content, interactions and features that are not age appropriate, safe and secure.
- The creation and distribution of child sexual abuse material and criminal activity related to non-consensual intimate imagery must be prevented, consistent with G7 members’ current applicable legal obligations.
- Parents, guardians and carers should be equipped with easy-to-use, privacy-respecting, effective parental control tools that are interoperable when technically feasible to help guide and empower minors online.
- Minors should be empowered with a comprehensive education focused on building the necessary literacy and skills in order to better understand digital systems, and critically engage with digital technologies, media and information, to recognize risks and thrive online.
- Minors’ safety is ensured safeguarded by the implementation of risk management, assessment and mitigation, and following safety-by-design approaches.
- Building a safer and more secure digital space for minors is enabled by digital service providers’ cooperation with relevant stakeholders.