The Blog of the European Association for Digital Transition
Social awareness on the risks minors face in the digital world is growing stronger. After years of taking uncritical positions, public opinion is increasingly aware that access by children and adolescents to the Internet, especially with mobile phones, involves characteristics that must be taken into account.
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Spanish society is increasingly more aware that improper use of the Internet and social networks by minors is a growing problem that must be faced resolutely. This is why the issue has entered the electoral campaign debate for the upcoming elections on July 23rd.
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Six civil society entities – the European Association for Digital Transition (EADT), promoter of the initiative, joined by Save the Children, the ANAR Foundation, iCMedia, Dale Una Vuelta and UNICEF – with institutional support from the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) have presented a proposal for a state pact to protect minors on the Internet and social networks. The initiative forms part of the start of Spain’s presidency of the European Union and before the upcoming general elections on July 23rd, which will result in a new legislature.
Read moreToday the European Association for Digital Transition is launching the campaign ‘A un click de ayudarles‘ (‘Just a click away from helping them’) in collaboration with the Atresmedia Foundation, the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) and the ANAR Foundation (helping children and teenagers at risk). The aim of this initiative is to encourage parents to take a more active role in the online activity of minors, alerting them to its risks – such as cyberbullying, isolation or self-esteem problems – and also to the characteristics of certain business models on the platforms and social networks, which are based on profiling the minor’s data for Its subsequent commercialisation via advertising.
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The world of work has changed forever. Even so, often we aren’t capable of seeing the entire picture. It’s not just a question of lost jobs, emerging professions, new working relationships… The revolution in employment, as a consequence of digitalisation, cannot be understood, in spite of its enormous transcendence, as an isolated event. As the president of the EADT, Ricardo Rodríguez, wrote in the latest edition of the magazine Telos, it is differentiated from other socio-labour revolutions in that it converges with the climate crisis. Accordingly, humanity is facing the challenge of shaping digital transition along with environmental sustainability. “Managing this transition requires democratic, social and economic control”, says the article. “It needs to build a framework that repositions people and citizens at the centre of equitable governance that shapes our future, and not just the future of work”.
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Being a child or teenager in the digital age is a very different experience from what previous generations had. From a very early age, minors are exposed to the fact that, through the Internet and social networks, their personal data is commercialized, and this use of private information can have consequences for the future that we barely perceive. And, like adults, they also suffer from some of the most harmful effects of the Internet, such as false information or the creation of information bubbles. In this, the big tech companies do not discriminate: the algorithm knows virtually nothing about being of legal age.
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Development of the fourth industrial revolution, with the continual expansion of big data, artificial intelligence and algorithms, poses enormously important challenges that far transcend the world of technology. A new society is being shaped that requires a new social pact, based on an ethical commitment in the use of algorithms, with full respect for fundamental human rights and adaptation of these basic protections to the digital environment.
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Uber has had a controversial history since its founding in 2009, from violent conflicts among drivers to a secret software allegedly used to evade law enforcement. Now, a leak of over 124,000 documents dubbed the Uber files shows the extent to which the firm under co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick capitalised on that chaos to expand across 40 countries.
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The Spanish Constitutional Court has just endorsed, in a judgment on June 27, 2022, what is known as the ‘right to be forgotten’, declaring previous decisions in regard to this by the Supreme Court and the National High Court to be unconstitutional. Thus, the Constitutional Court has positioned itself in support of arguments made by the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD), which in turn protected a Spanish businessperson affected by negative comments published in the United States and accessible via the Google search engine.
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We had no choice: Starting in spring 2020, with the global impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, children all over the world continued their schooling via online classes. And it was, in this dramatic context, a solution; undoubtedly, much better than being away from schooling for months and months due to a lack of means and connectivity.
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