Child Protection, Fair Design, and User Self-Determination under European Digital Rulebooks

Online platforms, connected devices, recommender systems, immersive environments, and AI-enabled services now fundamentally shape how children learn, socialise, form identities, access information, participate civically, and experience wellbeing. Digital environments are no longer peripheral to childhood, they have become core social infrastructure through which young people grow, relate to others, exercise agency, and develop as persons. This transformation is not incidental: it is structural and accelerating.

The first generation of digital regulation addressed children primarily through horizontal safeguards embedded in data protection, consumer protection, and content law, although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced child-specific provisions, notably around consent thresholds. A second generation of regulation, exemplified by the UK Online Safety Act and the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), shifted the frame from data processing to platform responsibility, imposing obligations concerning minors across recommender systems, targeted advertising, and systemic risk assessment. Emerging initiatives, most prominently the proposed EU Digital Fairness Act, signal a further regulatory turn, targeting manipulative design, exploitative commercial practices, and the structural asymmetries of power that leave children and adolescents disproportionately exposed.

Yet, despite the cumulative weight of this legislative activity, a widely shared concern persists: existing responses remain fragmented, reactive, and insufficiently matched to the speed and complexity of technological change. Anxiety about youth mental health, commercial surveillance, persuasive design, online exploitation, and the long-term developmental consequences of AI-mediated environments continues to mount and to outpace the regulatory imagination. The central challenge has shifted. It is no longer whether children require protection in digital spaces, but whether prevailing regulatory models possess the architecture, ambition, and adaptability to deliver it, while simultaneously enabling the positive digital futures that children and young people are entitled to claim.

This special issue seeks to critically examine how European digital rulebooks can protect children while also promoting fair design and supporting youth autonomy. It invites contributors to assess whether current and proposed frameworks strike the right balance between safety, privacy, freedom, participation, and developmental wellbeing.

Contributors are encouraged to engage with broader comparative developments, including online safety regimes, U.S. state reforms, Australian approaches, and other emerging child-centred governance models.

Areas of Interest

Authors are invited to submit papers or opinion pieces addressing themes including, but not limited to, the following:

1. Children’s Rights and Coherence Across European Digital Rulebooks

• Is a coherent framework for protecting children finally emerging across European digital regulation?
• Or do protections remain dispersed across overlapping instruments that are difficult to articulate and enforce?
• How should the best interests of the child be operationalised across digital law?

2. Data Protection and Youth Privacy

• Have GDPR protections for minors delivered meaningful outcomes in practice?
• How should consent, profiling, fairness, inferred data, and behavioural analytics be addressed for minors?
• What do meaningful transparency obligations look like for children and adolescents?

3. Platform Responsibility and Online Safety

• Has the DSA meaningfully improved protections for minors online? What lessons can be drawn from the UK Online Safety Act and comparable frameworks? How does the OSA and the DSA really compare?
• How should online safety obligations be reconciled with children’s rights to participation and expression?

4. Fair Design and Commercial Practices

• Are current approaches overly focused on age verification and content restriction while neglecting business models and interface design?
• How should law address dark patterns, addictive design, streaks, loot-box mechanics, and persuasive architecture?
• Can the proposed Digital Fairness Act reshape youth-facing digital markets?

5. User Self-Determination and Youth Autonomy

• How should Europe reconcile child protection with user self-determination?
• What does meaningful choice look like for children and teenagers in digital environments?
• How should law balance parental authority, platform governance, and youth autonomy?

6. Age Verification and Identity Governance

• Are age verification mandates proportionate, effective, and rights-compatible?
• Can privacy-preserving age assurance systems be deployed credibly at scale?
• Do access restrictions risk excluding young people from beneficial digital participation?

7. AI, Recommender Systems, and Emerging Technologies

• How should recommender systems that shape children’s experiences be regulated?
• What safeguards are needed for AI companions, tutors, and youth-facing assistants?
• Are children adequately protected from automated influence, profiling, and manipulative AI systems?

8. Education, Wellbeing, and Digital Development

• How should educational technology, learning analytics, and student data be governed?
• What links exist between platform design and youth mental health or wellbeing?
• What does a positive model of developmental digital governance look like?

9. Comparative and International Lessons

• What lessons should Europe draw from reforms in Australia, the United States, and other jurisdictions?
• Which child-focused interventions have proven effective in practice—and which have failed?
• Are global norms for child-centred digital governance beginning to emerge?

10. Institutional Design and Enforcement

• Which authorities should lead child digital protection: DPAs, consumer authorities, media regulators, education authorities, or online safety regulators?
• How should enforcement be coordinated across fragmented legal regimes?
• Do regulators possess sufficient technical expertise and resources?

Submission Guidelines

Submissions should provide robust analytical insights supported by empirical evidence, case law, regulatory decisions, behavioural research, technical analysis, or theoretical frameworks.

We particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions from legal scholars, psychologists, sociologists, economists, technologists, educators, child-rights experts, public health researchers, and policymakers.

Authors are invited to submit a blog post on the topic of their paper by the 4th of July. (word limits: 1300 words).

Authors will receive an invitation to join a workshop to present the first results of their research by 30 July 2026.

Authors will be invited to submit their full research papers to the Computer Law and Security Review by 22 January 2027.

Deadlines

• Blog posts submission (for the MediaLaws Blog): 4th of July 2026
• Workshop Provisional Date: 15 October 2026
• Full Paper Submission: 22 January 2027
• Notification of Acceptance: 15 April 2027