The UN warned on Monday that this deeply connected generation too often bears the brunt of the risks to information integrity, including disinformation, harassment, algorithmic biases and the malicious use of artificial intelligence (AI).
In a new brief published ahead of International Youth Day, the UN urges Member States, technology companies, advertisers, media and researchers to prioritise protection and participation to address harms.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres called last month for an AI Child Safety Pledge, comparing emerging AI technology to untested medicine as he urged stronger regulation.
“No child should be a guinea pig for unregulated AI…When a child is harmed, the answer must never be ‘the algorithm did it,” Mr. Guterres said in July at the first Global Dialogue on AI Governance.
Online harms no accident
The brief argues that the harms young people face online are not accidental. Rather, they are the product of business models that monetise attention and personal data, and of design choices built to maximise engagement and spending.
From algorithms that keep young users hooked to “dark patterns”, loot boxes and other tactics that drive compulsive use, the brief warns that children – whose habits, identities and relationships are still forming – are especially exposed.
AI, it adds, is outpacing efforts to respond to its rapid adoption, compounding risks such as AI-generated content to AI-facilitated exploitation.
It also identifies increasingly hidden advertising tactics as a means to exploit children to increase online spending.
“Taken together, these practices normalise pervasive commercial surveillance and manipulative design during the years when children and young people are most impressionable,” the brief reads.
Not only at risk
Children and youth are far more than potential victims, the brief stresses. They are creators, advocates and organizers, from youth-led movements reshaping civic life to young journalists and content creators contributing to public debate.
Yet the same online spaces that power youth movements also expose their organisers – often young women, minorities and activists – to online harassment and surveillance.
Young people’s perspectives must be integrated into research and policymaking that drives solutions to issues surrounding information integrity, the brief argues.
“Children and young people are among those most affected by today’s information crisis and among those most capable of helping to solve it,” said Charlotte Scaddan, UN Senior Adviser on Information Integrity. “Protecting them and including them are not competing goals. We have to do both.”
Window is closing fast
Governments and advocates have increasingly pushed children’s online safety to the forefront of policy debates on addictive design features, behavioural advertising, content moderation and privacy, the brief notes.
But with AI becoming increasingly ubiquitous, it warns the window is closing to write children’s rights into AI governance frameworks.
It suggests pathways for Member States to create laws, technology companies to protect child safety, advertisers to prioritise children’s rights, news media to serve young audiences and researchers to close gaps – such as in the Global South.
The UN continues to contribute to AI regulation efforts, including through the Global Dialogue and the Independent International Scientific Panel on AI – a scientific body to assess the opportunities and risks of AI.
“As digital technologies and information environments continue to evolve, the current moment presents an urgent opportunity to move from principles to practical action,” the brief says.
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