Principle 8:safety

Safety in digital environments requires policy makers and business innovators to take preventive measures proportionate to the risks, remedies, support and care for victims. The principle of safety draws together three sets of children’s rights:1 • Protection against abuse and neglect: considering how digital technologies can be abused to facilitate violence and harm against children or to recruit children for extremist, terrorist or other violent activities. • Special protection against sexual exploitation and sexual abuse: including the use of digital technologies ‘to solicit children for sexual purposes and to participate in online child sexual abuse’. • Promotion of physical and psychological recovery and social reintegration of child victims: within an environment that encourages good ‘health, self-respect and dignity of the child’. In the digital environment, risks of harm to children manifest in various forms and can be classified according to the 4Cs of content, contact, conduct and contract risks (Livingstone & Stoilova, 2021). The protection of children requires a risk assessment to determine the measures needed; it should not normally come at the cost of children’s full enjoyment of the digital environment and other rights.