The UN explained how children's rights apply online

The short answer

The United Nations committee that monitors the Convention on the Rights of the Child has set out, in detail, how children's existing rights, to privacy, protection, information and play, apply online, and it frames the digital world as a place where states must actively secure those rights rather than simply police risk.

What the evidence says

General comment No. 25 on children's rights in relation to the digital environment was issued by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, dated 2 March 2021. According to the Committee's own text, it draws on consultations including "an international consultation with 709 children living in a wide variety of circumstances in 28 countries," and sets out how states should apply the Convention across non-discrimination, evolving capacities, privacy, freedom of expression, education, and protection from violence and exploitation online. On privacy, the document states that digital surveillance of children "should not be conducted routinely, indiscriminately or without the child's knowledge," and that parents' monitoring "should be proportionate and in accordance with the child's evolving capacities." On protection, it directs states to legislate against grooming and trafficking facilitated by digital technology, while stating that a child's own self-generated sexual material, possessed or shared consensually and solely for private use, "should not be criminalized." On play, it treats digital recreation as supporting children's wellbeing, while calling for balance with face-to-face activity, particularly in early childhood, as the United Nations' own document portal entry confirms under the symbol CRC/C/GC/25.

For context

A general comment is the Committee's authoritative interpretation of the Convention, not a treaty in its own right, so it carries legal weight only for states that have ratified the Convention, and only as far as domestic courts and legislators draw on it; it creates no new enforceable obligation by itself. Its framing is deliberately dual: nearly every section pairs a risk states must guard against with an opportunity states must support, unlike a document written only to warn of danger. Its recommendations are broad by design, meant to guide national policy generally, not to specify enforcement mechanisms or technical standards.

A practical next step

You could use the general comment's own framing, weighing a specific online opportunity against a specific risk for your own child, as a more useful exercise than treating any single online activity as simply good or bad.

• For a given app or platform, what right is it primarily supporting for my child, and what right is most at risk?
• Does my approach to monitoring reflect my child's evolving capacities, or has it stayed the same since they were much younger?
• If my child created something online themselves, does our household's response treat that as expression worth respecting or only as a risk to manage?

General comment No. 25 is best read as a framework for weighing rights against each other, rather than a checklist of rules, and its emphasis on evolving capacities is a reminder that what is appropriate for one child's age and situation is not automatically appropriate for another's.