Journal of Children and Media – There is no right age! The search for age appropriate ways to support children’s digital lives and rights
In a digital world, certain milestone birthdays define childhood experiences. The age of 13 is commonly dubbed “the age of digital consent” and embedded in the terms and conditions of social media platforms, although data protection regulation may set an older age limit for companies to profile children. For access to “adult” products and services such as pornography or gambling, 18 is the recognised age barrier. Three critical questions arise: (i) Are age limits the optimal way to regulate children’s digital experiences? (ii) Does such “bright line” regulation select the “right” age, according to evidence from the field of children and digital media? (iii) Does it matter that age limits are widely contested and often poorly implemented?
In this provocation, we acknowledge but also question calls from parents and politicians for researchers to determine the “right age” for children to get their first smartphone, access social media, or decide their online activities without parental monitoring. These calls are often expressed negatively – should society ban “under-age” children from various aspects of the digital world? Whether the focus is on access or restriction, these are calls for simple answers that lead to more, often problematic questions: Who should manage this and how? Is the “right age” for parents to determine, governments to put into law, or companies to decide according to their interests?
For many academics, these are the wrong questions – too reductive of the pros and cons of digital access, insensitive to the heterogeneity among children, naïve about the practical efficacy of bright-line rules or bans, and deaf to the voices of children and young people. Moreover, it is near impossible to channel the complex and uneven body of available evidence about children’s encounters with risks of harm towards a straightforward consensus regarding any “right age.” Researchers recognise the host of risk and protective factors shaping children’s digital lives, so researchers prefer to answer – it depends. Or, as danah boyd (2014) powerfully argued a decade ago, it’s complicated.
To navigate both academic commitments and public concerns, we deploy a children’s rights framework to evaluate milestone birthdays as they are applied to the digital environment and highlight emerging alternatives that seek to redesign digital policy and practice in age-appropriate and child-rights-respecting ways.
