Big Tech S3E4: Beeban Kidron on Why Children Need a Safer Internet

January 7, 2021

Listen to this week’s new episode of Big Tech, where Baroness Beeban Kidron speaks about how online platforms need to do more to keep children in mind when designing their online space, and whether they should be formally mandated to do so.

In this episode of Big Tech, Taylor Owen speaks with Baroness Beeban Kidron, OBE, across-bench member of the British House of Lords, a filmmaker and the chair of 5Rights Foundation. Kidron is a strong advocate for children’s online rights. She is a member of the UK government’s Democracy and Digital Technologies Committee working to implement the Age Appropriate Design Code, which explains how the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) applies in the context of children using digital services and sets 15 flexible standards to ensure that children’s best interests are the primary consideration when designing and developing these services.

While the internet is still a relatively new technology, it has rapidly come to play a major role in children’s education, entertainment and play. There is now a generation of children who are growing up with online services that only launched a decade or so ago. Children are using platforms such as YouTube, Instagram and TikTok never designed for their age group, with unintended risks and consequences. “We must stop talking about the services that are directed at children, because children spend most of their time in services that are not directed at them… . when you have your discussions about facial recognition, about biometric data, about misinformation, disinformation, all of these things are affecting children. And yet every piece of policy is about YouTube Kids,” explains Kidron. She advocates for the whole of technology to consider younger users when designing and building digital services. But online platforms are failing to meet even minimum standards of protection, which is why Kidron is working on a regulatory approach. “History is littered with things that were not possible until they were mandated. And I am sufficiently old enough to remember when two-factor authentication was going to bring the internet down. And it didn’t. And I’m definitely old enough to remember when GDPR was going to bring the internet down. And I’m not saying all these things are perfect, they are desperately imperfect, but it is amazing how when things are mandated, they are also made possible.”