“How to protect children while respecting their freedom?” The Defender of Rights highlights this Thursday the right of children to private life, a thorny challenge for all families in particular as regards the digital universe.
Cyberbullying, cybersexism, “revenge porn,” “deep fakes,” image rights, and the right to be forgotten: the digital world poses serious challenges to children’s privacy and reputation.
A quarter of college students, for example, say they have experienced at least one breach of privacy online, according to a figure cited by the report.
In addition to parents, “national education professionals often have difficulties” to “take the appropriate measures” and the judicial treatment of these crimes “is still timid”, laments the Defender of Rights.
“Image rights”
To defend the “too often flouted” right to privacy, the independent authority lists 33 proposals addressed to public authorities in various fields, from digital to health or child protection.
For this reason, Ms. Hédon recommends training “every year, at the beginning of the school year, parents and children in digital technology, in their image rights, in the right to be forgotten”, in the possibility of removing content from Internet.
More than 1,100 young people between the ages of 6 and 21 were consulted to prepare the report, which coincides with Children’s Rights Day, which is celebrated on Sunday.
It seems that young people want to be more aware of “image rights”. They also ask that it be possible to “delete images or videos” that concern them on social networks.
The report notes this as a “multiplication of disputes between parents and young adults whose childhood photos and private details of their lives have been published” without their consent.
“My mother posts photos of me as a child on Facebook. What a shame!” illustrates a young woman quoted in the report.
“Clarify the legal framework”
While warning against “potentially intrusive” uses, such as geolocation, the report notes that many children “reaffirm the importance of parental controls to support autonomy and protect their privacy.”
Regarding the more specific aspect of the protection of children against violence, the report recommends “clarifying the legal framework of the responsibility of doctors to allow them, without running the risk of a disciplinary process, to denounce before the administrative or judicial authorities any act of ill-treatment”. either proven or suspected.”
The issue of body privacy is also addressed. The Rights Defender insists on the importance of children having closed toilets, especially in schools, and a single room for children supervised by child protection or “deprived of liberty”.
“Some people don’t want to go to the toilet at school because they can’t isolate themselves,” says Ms Hédon.
Finally, the Ombudsman also mentions the importance of “preserving family relations” of children entrusted to the protection of minors, migrants “unaccompanied minors”, or imprisoned minors.
Source: BFM TV
