Baroness Fights for Children’s Digital Rights

British filmmaker Baroness Kidron has pushed the tech industry to restrict the collection of data on minors, helping children’s protections on the internet more closely match those in the real world.

In real life, “we’ve already decided that children have rights,” Baroness Kidron, British House of Lords member, said. “For me, it’s all a part of just making tech normal.”

In 2012, Lady Kidron filmed a documentary – ‘InRealLife’ – about children in the digital age. Two years later, she had started a foundation, 5Rights, to promote children’s online rights.

Lady Kidron then proposed the Age Appropriate Design Code in 2017, for tech companies to follow new guidelines for minors. The proposed requirements include online services turning on the highest privacy settings by default and turning off techniques that could collect unnecessary personal data or push children to stay online longer.