Last week, the National Centre for Human Rights created an important space for specialists and stakeholders working on digital safety to discuss and develop recommendations around protecting the most vulnerable groups in digital environments.
The two day discussions offered a rich opportunity to exchange experiences, reflect on key challenges, and think through practical solutions. As someone closely following children’s digital protection issues, two points in particular stood out to me.
The first was raised by lawyer Saeed Karajah, who highlighted a growing gap that is hard to ignore: digital development is moving far faster than legislation. Legal amendments take time to move through constitutional and institutional processes, while the digital space keeps evolving at a pace that leaves policy constantly playing catch up.
The second point relates to a more difficult tension, the balance between a child’s right to access information and express themselves, as guaranteed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Jordan’s Child Rights Act (Articles 7, 8, and 23), and their right to be protected from violence and harm, including online abuse.
On paper, the Child Rights Act already provides a solid framework for this balance. Articles 7, 8, and 23 address children’s access to information, their right to privacy in digital spaces, and their protection from cybercrime and exploitation. The question today is therefore not whether the legal tools exist, but why they are not translating into consistent protection in practice.
What became clear during the discussions is that the main gap is no longer in legislation itself, but in the policies and mechanisms needed to enforce it. This applies both to the Cybercrime Law and the Child Rights Act.
This is where the need for more coherent national policy becomes urgent. There is a need for clearer definitions of what digital rights and safety for children actually mean in practice, fewer grey areas in implementation, and stronger enforcement pathways. It also requires clearer rules governing how digital service providers operate in relation to children, stronger protection of children’s privacy online, and a more serious integration of child friendly design principles into how platforms are built.
At the same time, responsibility cannot rest on national policy alone. Digital platforms themselves play a central role. Protecting children online is not achieved only through awareness campaigns or parental supervision. It also depends on whether safety is built into digital products from the start. This includes holding companies accountable for detecting and reporting harmful content, and questioning design choices that are built to maximise engagement, even when that means keeping children online longer than is healthy.
Looking at international experiences can be useful here. While some countries have chosen to restrict children’s access to social media altogether, including recent steps taken in the United Kingdom, Brazil has taken a different path that feels more targeted.
Instead of focusing mainly on limiting access, Brazil has focused on regulating the design features that shape children’s behaviour online. Platforms are now required to rethink or remove elements such as infinite scrolling, which removes natural stopping points, autoplay features in child oriented content, emotionally manipulative notifications, and targeted advertising based on behavioural tracking of children.
This approach does not remove children from digital spaces. It tries instead to make those spaces less exploitative. It shifts part of the responsibility back onto the platforms themselves, where many of these risks are actually designed.
At a time when a national committee led by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission is working on a national strategy for child online protection, the Brazilian experience feels worth looking at more seriously. The real challenge is not only how to reduce exposure to harm, but also how to deal with the design systems that make overuse and manipulation so easy in the first place. Alongside that, there is still a need to strengthen awareness work with children and parents, because digital protection will always require a shared responsibility between law, platforms, families, and schools.