Children's digital rights: a priority

Internet access in the global North has risen steadily over the past two decades, transforming commerce, government, workplace, education and home. For much of this time, research and policy has aimed to stimulate and extend innovation, diffusion and adoption while preventing the emergence of digital inequalities that exacerbate prior economic and social inequalities. Policy attention has focused on the management of technological change maximising digital inclusion. The importance of evidence in critiquing the accompanying hyperbole - optimistic and pessimistic - and in guiding policy initiatives has been crucial. Today, internet access in the global South is also rising. Already, data from the ITU shows that one in four households (or one in three individuals) in developing countries has internet access (see Figure 1).1 It would be unwise to speculate about the likely pace of change in developing countries, but it is crucial to note that, in this graph, the line for developed countries represents country populations summing to one and a quarter billion people while that for developing countries represents nearly six billion.