Fairness by design: Towards a child-rights approach to digital fairness
Ayça Atabey, a Research Associate at Edinburgh University, takes a look at the concept of ‘fairness’ in relation to children in the digital environment, explaining how crucial it is and how the UK’s Age Appropriate Design Code offers an example of good practice of promoting fairness beyond just preventing unfairness.
How do we design a fair digital world for children? What makes the digital world fair? Why does fairness matter when protecting and empowering children in the digital world?
As data-driven technologies, including AI systems, become more widespread, the emphasis on fairness in digital design and legal and policy frameworks continues to grow. Understanding fairness within various interconnected yet distinct frameworks is crucial. How fairness is defined, interpreted, applied and enforced significantly impacts children’s lives and rights. Therefore, it is crucial to adopt a child rights lens when shaping compliance obligations to ensure fairness for children in today’s digital world.
Fairness in legal and policy frameworks relating to the digital environment
Fairness is a concept embedded across different areas of law and regulation relating to the digital environment, including, notably, AI regulation, data protection, human rights, consumer and competition laws.
In the EU, key examples include the AI Act, Digital Markets Act; Digital Servies Act; Data Act. In the UK, fairness can be seen, for example, in the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR), pro-innovation approach to AI, and AI regulation (Bill). In the US, notably, fairness sits at the heart of the Federal Trade’s Commission’s mission in protecting the public from unfair and deceptive business practices, which are increasingly being addressed in relation to children and the digital world.
Fairness is also referenced in international policy frameworks; for example, UNICEF’s Policy Guidance on AI for children demands fairness and non-discrimination in child-centred AI. In international standards such as ISO/IEC TR 24027:2021,fairness is important in assessing bias in AI systems.
In consumer protection law, which no longer sufficiently protects children, there are efforts to redefine digital fairness to ensure that its scope can effectively address unfairness challenges that we see in the rapidly changing digital world. In data protection law, although fairness has been a core principle for over two decades, it wasn’t until last year it was used for the first time as a separate ground on its own, to hold a company (TikTok) accountable for carrying out unfair design practices concerning children. Overall, fairness is a key and dynamic concept across various frameworks, and its application affects children’s digital experiences and rights.
Fairness beyond avoiding unfairness: the AADC
Defining and interpreting fairness in legal and policy frameworks governing today’s AI-driven world is crucial for protecting and empowering children. Despite definitional challenges and the abstract nature of fairness, it can also be a powerful tool that leads to a significant impact on the regulatory landscape. An excellent example in the UK is the ICO’s Age-Appropriate Design Code (AADC), underpinned by the fairness principle in the UK GDPR. This translates data protection principles, including fairness, into tangible design standards for online services. For users, this means that online service should implement “high privacy” by default and use child-friendly language to ensure children understand their individual rights.
The AADC has become the gold standard for children’s privacy and exemplifies how fair data and design practices should go beyond merely addressing unfair data practices such preventing bias and discrimination in AI systems. The AADC requires considering how data practices can be in children’s best interests and respecting their rights under the UN Convention on the Rights of the child (UNCRC). Fairness is especially crucial to AI governance frameworks on a global scale, particularly to address issues such as bias, discriminatory outcomes, and lack of transparency, for example, in systems like large language models (LLMs).
Overall, fairness is more than mitigating unfairness and avoiding harms; it’s about actively promoting children’s rights and empowering children in the digital world. By ensuring data and design practices benefit children and respect their rights, fairness can contribute to creating a better digital world. The AADC shows how fairness can be a powerful and flexible concept that goes beyond mitigating unfairness. It involves creating a digital environment that actively supports children’s rights and well-being. Fairness, in this expanded sense, is ambitious, but it is a foundational concept that helps set the stage for a fairer and more empowering digital world for children.
Towards a common child-rights approach to fairness by design
Terminology used by different stakeholders is critical to promoting constructive deliberation about children’s rights in the digital world. Fairness is no exception. As a widely used concept with many meanings across diverse fields, it can be confusing, subjective, and abstract, making it challenging to translate into practice. Therefore, adopting a common approach to fairness in data and design practices is essential.
In its Glossary of terms relating to children’s digital lives, the Digital Futures Commission defines fairness by design as
“Embedding fairness into data processing and the design of digital technologies by addressing children’s needs and expectations while promoting their best interests. This requires balancing children’s rights and interests, ensuring children’s control and agency over their data, and fair treatment of children. We look beyond data protection laws and adopt a universal child rights-based approach, promoting equity, accessibility and inclusiveness for designing a ‘fair’ digital world from which all children can benefit equally.”
Prioritizing child rights by design is key to making the digital world fair for children. While AI fairness discussions often focus on preventing non-discrimination and addressing risks such as bias, fairness surely goes beyond these. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General Comment No. 25 (2021) provides a pathway to realize children’s rights in the digital environment, including AI-driven technologies which can inform what a fair digital world should look like and how the emerging frameworks can play a role in this.
Creating fair digital futures for and with children
Designing a fair digital environment for children requires actively including their voices. Discussing digital fairness for children without their input would be inherently unfair. Developed with children’s needs and voices in mind, the AADC sets a best practice example for policy and legislative framework developments, highlighting the importance of including children’s voices in creating fair digital futures. It was developed drawing upon responses to the ICO’s call for evidence,ICO-funded research at the London School of Economics, which engaged diverse stakeholder groups and most importantly, children themselves.
As the digital regulatory landscape evolves, the flexible nature of fairness in legal and policy frameworks becomes a powerful tool, enabling stakeholders to address emerging risks while ensuring children benefit from the digital world. This power can only be unlocked if fairness is interpreted in a way that puts children’s rights at its heart. In short, fairness in the digital world shouldn’t be merely a regulatory compliance issue; it’s about genuinely listening to what children want and need and ensuring they are treated fairly.
As we navigate the complexities of AI and other data-driven technologies, creating fair, inclusive, and equitable digital futures for all children should be a paramount goal. This can only be achieved through the joint efforts of diverse stakeholders to understand the risks and opportunities the digital world provides and, importantly, by working for and with children.
First published on the Media@LSE blog and republished here under Creative Commons Licensing.
This post represents the views of the author and not the position of the Media@LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Ayça Atabey is a Research Associate at Edinburgh University and a PhD Affiliate at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. She conducts interdisciplinary research at the intersection of IT Law and Human Computer Interaction. Her current research focuses on data protection law, child rights and operationalizing Responsible AI principles in education. Ayca received Alan Turing Institute’s PhD Enrichment Award in 2023. She also works as a consultant at Digital Futures for Children, and an Evaluation Researcher focusing on Gender Equality, Data Governance and Human Rights at UN Women Europe and Central Asia.
