A Fairer Fight: Protecting Childhood and Adolescence in a Digital World
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In a speech delivered virtually to the Global Age Assurance Summit in Amsterdam, Julie Inman Grant argued that privacy-preserving age-assurance technology has matured enough to make meaningful age limits on children's platform access practical, after nearly two decades of her own work on the issue. She said social media was not built with children's safety as a goal, and described a 'darker side' including algorithmic manipulation, endless-scroll design, exposure to violent pornography and extremist content, and — while cautioning research is still evolving — content related to disordered eating and suicidal ideation. She argued unregulated, engagement-optimized platform use may interfere with healthy development when it displaces sleep, physical activity, or offline interaction, and outlined eSafety's 'three Ps' framework. TechKids Foundation includes this speech as Grant's statement of the reasoning behind global age-assurance efforts.
Inman Grant, Julie. "A Fairer Fight: Protecting Childhood and Adolescence in a Digital World." Address to the Global Age Assurance Summit, Amsterdam (delivered virtually), April 10, 2025. Published by eSafety Commissioner. https://www.esafety.gov.au/newsroom/blogs/a-fairer-fight-protecting-childhood-and-adolescence-in-a-digital-world