LSE Public Lectures and Events Podcast

World Children’s Day: Digital Futures for Children – Children’s Rights Under Pressure in the Digital Environment

Date: November 20, 2025
Host: Professor Sonia Livingstone (LSE)
Speakers:

• Dr. Kim Sylvander (Digital Futures for Children Centre)
• Gerison Lansdown (International Consultant and Advocate on Children’s Rights)
• Gastón Wright (Director, Civic Compass)

Overview

This special World Children’s Day event centers on the vital question: What is the current state and future of children’s rights in our increasingly digital world? Marking 36 years since the UN’s adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the episode delves deeply into the impact of the landmark General Comment No. 25 (2021), which adapts the Convention to the digital environment. The panel explores how this document is changing policy, law, and advocacy worldwide, where it still struggles, and how to make digital spaces genuinely rights-respecting for children.

Main Themes and Purpose

• Assessing the real-world difference that General Comment No. 25 has made for children’s rights in digital environments
• Unpacking the growing pressures on children’s rights: technological change, weakened protections, corporate power, and political resistance
• Mapping global progress—where the General Comment is transforming norms, laws, and governance, and where progress is uneven or threatened
• Examining the roles of key actors: governments, international bodies, civil society, tech industry, parents, and—critically—children themselves
• Debating tensions between protection, participation, and evolving capacities in digital childhood

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Setting the Context: General Comment No. 25 and the Digital Child Rights Framework

Speaker: Prof. Sonia Livingstone
Timestamp: [00:14 – 09:38]

• General Comment No. 25 (adopted in 2021) provides an authoritative interpretation of how the Convention on the Rights of the Child applies in the digital world.
• The document addresses pressing questions: what “good” looks like, what’s currently going wrong, who should act, and in what ways.
• Emphasizes the need to prioritize children over profit and ensure business models and technologies are rights-respecting.
• Highlights mounting pressures: state legitimacy crises, UN underfunding, political polarization, parental rights vs. children’s rights, and the unchecked advance of AI.

“We’re asserting that a child rights framework is vital to centre children...inspire and legitimate the actions that respect and protect their rights. Which often means in practice trying to put children before profit, trying to think about the business model of the disposition digital world.”
— Prof. Sonia Livingstone [06:18]

2. Research Findings: The Impact of General Comment No. 25

Speaker: Dr. Kim Sylvander
Timestamp: [09:38 – 37:29]

a. Progress and Patterns

• General Comment No. 25 now shapes every concluding observation of the Committee on the Rights of the Child, with a much stronger focus on digital issues: online violence, exploitation, privacy, and AI.
• Tangible legal and policy impacts in countries like Ireland, Brazil, Indonesia, and across regional bodies (EU, African Union).
• Key distinction: Implementation remains uneven—advanced in some countries, fledgling or symbolic in others, deeply unequal globally.

“General Comment number 25 has catalyzed real change, but what changes have occurred is uneven, vulnerable, and often resisted.”
— Dr. Kim Sylvander [12:58]

b. Findings from Monitoring and Review

• 79 State Party reviews show a growing (but fragmented) recognition of digital rights.
• Emphasis remains on protection (from harm), while participation and agency are underdeveloped.
• Civil society uses the General Comment to push for higher standards—often more effectively than governments.

“What’s striking is that very few children’s reports mention the General Comment at all...children...say they have almost no voice in shaping the policies or platforms that govern their lives.”
— Dr. Kim Sylvander [21:34]

c. Theory of Change

• Four key uptake pathways: legal, institutional, advocacy, normative.
• The General Comment travels by shaping discourses, toolkits, laws, and advocacy but lacks enforcement, making its impact subject to local context and competition with commercial interests.

“Rather than asking is the general comment binding? The real question becomes who is picking it up, who is resisting it? And where is it starting to reshape law and practice?”
— Dr. Kim Sylvander [26:58]

d. International and Regional Developments

• UN: From initial neglect to political endorsement (2023), with some member states resisting, arguing the General Comment is "non-binding" and "controversial".
• Europe: The General Comment is embedded in major regulations (EU Digital Services and AI Acts).
• Africa: AU adopts sweeping continent-wide child digital rights policies, though practical enforcement is unproven.
• ASEAN: Progress mostly limited to online safety, with agency and holistic rights slower to develop.

e. Challenges and Enablers

• Enablers: Strong institutions, regional frameworks, mobilized civil society, existing data protection law, meaningful child participation.
• Barriers: Weak capacity, fragmented governance, overwhelming corporate power, minimal child involvement in policymaking.

f. Measurement and the Path Forward

• Urges development of clear indicators: child-specific digital laws, enforcement capacity, company duties of care, meaningful participation, available remedies, and practical digital inclusion.

“The General Comment has given us clarity, coherence and a shared vocabulary. Its long-term impact now depends on sustained political will, effective institutions, and genuine participation, especially of children themselves.”
— Dr. Kim Sylvander [39:30]

3. Respondent Reflections

Gerison Lansdown: The Evolving Status of the Child and Three Pillars of Rights

Timestamp: [41:20 – 50:49]

• Child autonomy is not presumed—children’s rights must be balanced with their evolving capacities, requiring both protection and empowerment.
• Urging a holistic framework: promotion, respect, and protection of capacities must all be integrated.
• Warns of risks when states push parental rights over children’s, enabling both state and big tech abdication of responsibility.

“We need to obviously recognise children not as passive recipients...but active contributors and shapers...when we think about what kind of environments are we creating for children in the online environment.”
— Gerison Lansdown [46:35]

Gastón Wright: Three Critical Stakeholders – Public, Policymakers, and Big Tech

Timestamp: [50:58 – 59:41]

• Stresses the need for localization and narrative-building—using accessible language for the general public, as seen in Brazil’s success.
• Advocates targeted strategies to increase digital literacy among legislators, often non-experts who need pragmatic, technical explanations.
• When dealing with big tech, suggests shifting focus from rights discourse alone to challenging business models, increasing reputational costs, and leveraging anti-monopoly frameworks.

“If we want to have a relationship with big tech where they take us very seriously, we need to increase their reputational cost...look more into the models of the DMA rather than...the DSA.”
— Gastón Wright [60:18]

4. Audience Q&A: Practical Challenges and Political Choices

Timestamp: [61:23 – 89:40]

• Questions included:
  • Addressing street children’s rights in South Asia where parental frameworks are lacking
  • Balancing over/under-protectiveness in parental responsibility
  • Digital risks for children in conflict-affected areas, where digital issues are rarely prioritized by policymakers
  • How to integrate rights education into digital literacy for children and educators
  • Transitioning from reactive to proactive (AI) safeguarding by design
  • How to maintain the General Comment’s relevance and momentum
  • Addressing “zero-rating” schemes and tech monopolies in the Global South which restrict children’s digital experiences to specific platforms
  • The risks of states retreating behind parental control, leaving children unprotected from both state neglect and predatory platforms

Notable Quotes

“The challenge is finding...engage with people who are caring for children, to engage with children themselves about how they perceive and understand risk. Because there is a big difference between risk and harm”—Gerison Lansdown [67:44]

“Parental control...is at the very core of the way that big tech have constructed a narrative around protecting children...I think we need a very different narrative to explain why we care about the privacy of the children.”—Gastón Wright [69:31]

“We need to allow different apps, different Internet providers to have zero rating as well, same as the big techs...that will create some sort of level in the playing field.”—Gastón Wright [87:08]

Memorable Moments & Notable Quotes

• On the evolving capacities of the child in law:

  “All the rights...do apply to children from birth. But because children don’t have capacity, parents are vested with the rights and responsibilities to provide direction and guidance to children. But there are very clear parameters on how that must be done.”
  — Gerison Lansdown [42:23]

• On practical advocacy and local uptake:

  “Brazil went further with a digital statute of the child and adolescent, embedding the general comment principles into law. Safety-by-design obligations for all services likely to be accessed by children, reliable age assurance and a ban on loot boxes...”
  — Dr. Kim Sylvander [31:25]

• On why implementation is so hard:

  “Even where the General Comment is referenced, it does not always translate into meaningful practice. Rights related to participation, access and agency remain especially fragile.”
  — Dr. Kim Sylvander [36:28]

Important Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment / Theme | |------------|---------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:14 | Prof. Sonia Livingstone’s Introduction to the General Comment | | 09:38 | Dr. Kim Sylvander: Impact Overview and Research Findings | | 12:58 | Uneven progress and global disparities in implementation | | 26:58 | How the General Comment diffuses and is contested/resisted | | 31:25 | Concrete national examples (Brazil, Ireland, Indonesia) | | 39:30 | Need for measurement and sustained political will | | 41:20 | Gerison Lansdown: The evolving child and three pillars of rights | | 50:58 | Gastón Wright: Public, policymakers, and confronting big tech | | 61:23 | Audience Q&A begins (parental roles, digital inequality, AI, etc.) | | 79:10 | Rights education in schools | | 87:08 | Net neutrality and “zero-rating” in the Global South | | 89:40 | Calculating societal costs of digital harms (closing reflections) |

Conclusion

The episode offers a rich, honest assessment of the state of children's rights in digital environments. The General Comment No. 25 is a powerful tool, catalyzing change at the level of policy and discourse, but faces persistent barriers: from the over-dominance of protection at the expense of participation, to the entrenched power of big tech, global inequalities, and policy slow-footedness.

The collective takeaway is that real transformation depends on coordinated, resourced, and participatory action involving children themselves. Legal recognition is only the first step; measured progress, empowered advocacy, and political will are the essential next chapters.

Further Listening/Reading

• UN Convention on the Rights of the Child General Comment No. 25 (2021)
• Five Rights Foundation
• LSE Digital Futures for Children