Protecting minors online: Yes, it’s possible
AFNOR has published a guide to best practices for preventing risks and protecting minors on social media as part of the AFNOR Spec series. This highly anticipated document.
Cybersecurity
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At what age do children start using social media? At 13, the theoretical age limit for some platforms? Or at 15, as called for by the new French regulations on digital maturity?
Of course not. According to data from the CNIL, children first sign up for an online platform at the age of eight and a half. Given the very real risks they face, a group led by AFNOR—at the initiative of the Yubo platform—has published a guide outlining best practices to protect them.
This teamwork is important because this is the very issue that suffers from a diffusion of responsibility. Who should protect children online? Parents? Governments? Platforms? Young people themselves, who are called upon to take responsibility? Published on November 23, 2023, and available for free here, the AFNOR Spec 2305 document provides some answers. Sharone Franco, Director of Legal and Public Affairs at Yubo, gives an overview in this video here. The guide, which will soon be translated into English, is divided into three main chapters:
- Audit
- Detection, moderation, and reporting
- Transparency and Awareness
It concludes with a comprehensive overview of the legal framework. Since this framework is constantly evolving, this section of the document will be updated within eighteen months. The guide identifies an initial challenge: minors cannot be protected if they cannot be identified. But this is not the only challenge for platforms: they must also be able to moderate usage, report abuses as quickly as possible, raise awareness throughout their ecosystem, and comply with their country’s regulatory framework. It is a complex landscape.
AFNOR Spec 2305: A Representative Roundtable Discussion
An initiative designed to benefit all platform operators, beyond those who were directly involved (Yubo and Meta). “This document will enable all of us to secure our businesses. It was important to have the right group of stakeholders on board,” noted Sharone Franco of Yubo. “We worked hand in hand: platforms, security solution providers like Bodyguard, institutions, and associations. We took into account rapid technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence. This document is the one I would have liked to have had in my hands when we launched Yubo.” Among the organizations providing support are the CNIL and ARCOM.
This document comes at just the right time. On November 20, 2023, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee summoned three platform executives to a hearing on the exploitation of minors online. “Big Tech has failed to regulate itself, to the detriment of our children,” declared the senator leading this pushback. On our side of the Atlantic, the European Commission announced in early November 2023 that it had issued two new requests for information to YouTube and TikTok under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The two platforms must respond regarding the measures they have taken to protect minors, particularly concerning their physical and mental health.
Minors and Social Media: Cyberbullying Is Deadly
The challenge is therefore immense. And it is rooted in a societal context that is particularly dire as well, as Samuel Comblez, director of operations at E-Enfance (3018)—a recognized public interest organization—pointed out in his opening remarks at a meeting held on November 23, 2023, in Paris to present the document: “ Today, cyberbullying kills. We have to say it like that. Twenty percent of families are affected by this new risk. And as a psychologist, I can say that minors are not doing well. Of course, not everything is the fault of social media, but there has been a 40% increase in suicide attempts since the end of the COVID-19 health crisis, particularly among girls. ”
Samuel Comblez cites another statistic: “At the age of 5 years and 10 months, children start going online with their parents. A year later, they go online on their own without asking anyone’s permission.” ” The psychologist was pleased that the group led by AFNOR, of which he was a member, had succeeded within eight months (and “only 19 years after the birth of Facebook”) in producing this first guide. Drawing a parallel with the automobile, he noted that driver’s licenses, followed by traffic laws, didn’t appear until more than a century after the first cars. Not to mention rear seat belts! “We managed to write 103 very practical pages, with the AFNOR group acting as our midwife,” he summarized.
AFNOR Spec 2305: A Representative Roundtable Discussion
An initiative designed to benefit all platform operators, beyond those who were directly involved (Yubo and Meta). “This document will enable all of us to secure our businesses. It was important to have the right group of stakeholders on board,” noted Sharone Franco of Yubo. “We worked hand in hand: platforms, security solution providers like Bodyguard, institutions, and associations. We took into account rapid technological advancements, particularly in artificial intelligence. This document is the one I would have liked to have had in my hands when we launched Yubo.” Among the organizations providing support are the CNIL and ARCOM.
This document comes at just the right time. On November 20, 2023, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee summoned three platform executives to a hearing on the exploitation of minors online. “Big Tech has failed to regulate itself, to the detriment of our children,” declared the senator leading this pushback. On our side of the Atlantic, the European Commission announced in early November 2023 that it had issued two new requests for information to YouTube and TikTok under the Digital Services Act (DSA). The two platforms must respond regarding the measures they have taken to protect minors, particularly concerning their physical and mental health.
