What is Child Rights by Design?
Child Rights by Design (CRbD) synthesises the UNCRC’s 42 substantive rights of the child, along with the entirety of General comment No. 25, into 11 principles to guide the work of those who design, develop and deploy digital technologies that impact on children’s lives. They are designed to be easy to use and apply – they can even be pinned on the office wall as a reminder!
Why do we need children’s rights “by design”
“The idea of ‘by design’ harnesses the generative power of providers, designers and policymakers to shape technological innovation in ways that prioritise values that promote human wellbeing – privacy, safety, security, ethics, equality, inclusion and, encompassing all these, human rights including children’s rights.”
The internet is a part of everyday life for many children across the world: platforms are increasingly integrated into family life, educational settings and opportunities for play. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) sets out children’s rights for states around the world. The Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25 explains how these apply in relation to the digital environment.
Together, these comprise the global, authoritative statement of children’s rights in a digital world. This gives states their mandate to respect, protect and fulfil children’s rights, including the obligation to ensure that digital businesses protect, respect and remedy children’s rights.
The internet is fundamentally designed for commercial gain. Persuasive design encourages users to act in the commercial interests of Big Tech companies, including compulsive or risky by design features driven by business models that profit from encouraging children to spend more time online or leading them to harm.
While regulation has led companies to introduce some child rights-respecting features and court cases can also improve regulation, regulation often lags behind technological innovation. Since retrofitting design to respect rights after a product is developed can be difficult and expensive, embedding children’s rights from the start and throughout the design process would be a more effective, efficient and rights-respecting.
While some advocate privacy-by-design or safety-by-design, the DFC advocates Child Rights by Design (CRbD) to encompass not just some but all of children’s rights. Human rights law recognises that the realisation of each right can affect the others, requiring a holistic approach.
CRbD applies to digital products and services that children use directly and to those that impact their rights (for example, when adults process children’s health data or deploy AI systems in education or make decisions about digital access that exclude some children). Its implementation can be and is being evaluated through the use of child rights impact assessment – by businesses or policymakers, as well as rights-respecting product standards or codes such as 5Rights’ Children & AI Design Code.
How we developed Child Rights by Design
From 2020 to 2023, the Digital Futures Commission asked, “What does good look like” for children in a digital world? Its answer - Child Rights by Design - was informed by consultations with children and young people and through co-design workshops with designers, developers and policymakers. Here’s a quick overview – and a summary of who the guidance is for, as part of the CRbD toolkit full of practical inspiration and examples.
Since then, the Digital Futures for Children centre has explored the opportunities for realising this vision, consulting developers around the world and learning about the barriers they face – including lack of awareness of children’s rights, unclear business case or lack of international cohesion. For these reasons, we have contributed CRbD-related research to inform UNDP’s 2025 Human Development Report, the UN development of its Global Digital Compact and the 2025 20+ year review of the World Summit on the Information Society, among other high-level deliberations.
Advancing Child Rights by Design
The 11 CRbD principles have become the DFC’s inspiration for initiating, organising and prioritising our work. Our publications and other outputs are now presented in accordance with the principles – scroll down on this page to find them all.
For example, we have taken a child rights approach to:
See also the specific sources listed below.
Mapping child rights onto design principles
As noted above, the 11 Child Rights by Design principles capture most articles in the UNCRC. By referring to the relevant paragraphs of General comment No. 25, practitioners and policymakers can gain clear guidance on implementing these principles in their work.
table aligning UNCRC articles with CRBD principles
| UNCRC articles | Child Rights by Design principles | Child Rights by Design considerations | See GC25 paragraphs |
|---|
| 2, 20-23, 25, 30 |
Principle 1: Equity & diversity Be inclusive, treat everyone fairly, provide for diverse needs & circumstances
|
EQUITY AND DIVERSITY (and non-discrimination, family environment and alternative care) Do you treat all children equally, fairly and support vulnerable children? |
9–11, 87, 114–22 |
| 3(1) |
Principle 2: Best interests Embed children’s best interests in product development, design and policy |
BEST INTERESTS Are children’s best interests a primary consideration in policy and product design? |
12, 13, 88 |
| 12 |
Principle 3: Consultation Engage and listen to the views of children in product development, design and policy |
CONSULTATION (right to be heard) Are children meaningfully consulted in developing your policy or product? |
16-18 |
| 5, 18 |
Principle 4: Age appropriate Develop age-appropriate policies and products by design, and consider using age assurance |
AGE APPROPRIATE (evolving capacity) Is your policy or product appropriate for child users or adaptable for children of different ages |
15, 19-21, 84-6 |
| 4, 40-42 |
Principle 5: Responsible Comply with legal frameworks, provide remedies as needed & conduct Child Rights Impact Assessments |
RESPONSIBLE (general measures of implementation) Do you review and comply with laws and policies relevant to child rights? |
22–7, 33, 35–9, 43–9, 123–4 |
| 13–15, 17 |
Principle 6: Participation Enable children’s participation, expression and access to information |
PARTICIPATION (civil rights and freedoms) Does your policy or product enable children to participate in digital publics? |
50–66, 79 |
| 16 |
Principle 7: Privacy Embed privacy-by-design and data protection in policies and product development and use |
PRIVACY (and data protection) Have you adopted privacy-by-design in policy and product development and use? |
67–78 |
| 19, 34, 35, 37-39 |
Principle 8: Safety Embed safety-by-design in policies and product development and use |
SAFETY (protection from violence and sexual harms) Have you adopted safety-by-design in policy and product development and use? |
80–3 |
| 6, 23, 24, 26, 27, 33 |
Principle 9: Wellbeing Enhance and do not harm the health and wellbeing of all children, including by inclusive design |
WELLBEING (life, survival, health and disabilities) Does your policy or product enhance, not harm, children’s mental or physical health and wellbeing? |
14, 89–98 |
| 28-31 |
Principle 10: Development Enable children’s learning, free play, sociability and belonging, and their fullest development |
DEVELOPMENT (education, leisure, cultural activities) Does your policy or product enable children’s learning, imagination, play and belonging |
99–111 |
| 32, 36 |
Principle 11: Agency Support children’s decision-making and reduce exploitative features & business models |
AGENCY (economic exploitation) Have you taken steps to reduce compulsive and exploitative product features? |
40–2, 112–13 |
Key sources for Child Rights by Design
1. Livingstone, S. & Pothong, K. (2021). What is meant by “by design”? Digital Futures Commission blog.
2. Livingstone, S. & Pothong, K. (2023). Child Rights by Design: Guidance for Innovators of Digital Products and Services Used by Children. Digital Futures Commission.
3. Livingstone, S., and Pothong, K. (2023). Child Rights by Design. In Kirkham, H., & Woodfall, A. (eds.), Children’s Media Yearbook 2023. The Children’s Media Foundation.
4. Pothong, K., & Livingstone, S. (2023). Children’s Rights through Children’s Eyes: A methodology for consulting children. Digital Futures Commission.
5. Pothong, K., Colvert, A., Livingstone, S., & Pschetz, L. (2024). Applying children’s rights to digital products: Exploring competing priorities in design. Proceedings of the 23rd Annual ACM Interaction Design and Children Conference, Delft, Netherlands.
6. Livingstone, S., Third, A., and Lansdown, G. (2024). Children vs Adults: Negotiating UNCRC General comment No.25 on children's rights in the digital environment. In Puppis, M., et al. (Eds), Handbook of Media and Communication Governance. Edward Elgar.
7. Livingstone, S. and Sylwander, K. (2024). Children’s rights and the UN Global Digital Compact. Academy of Social Sciences.
8. Day, E., and Livingstone, S. (2025). Navigating Children’s Rights in the Digital Age: The North Star for tech companies everywhere. Medium.
9. Pothong, K. and Livingstone, S. (2025). Global developers’ insights into Child Rights by Design. Digital Futures for Children centre.
10. Livingstone, S. & Pothong, K. (2025). Child Rights Impact Assessment: A policy tool for a rights-respecting digital environment. Policy & Internet.
Applying a child rights by design approach
11. Livingstone, S. (2020). Can we realise children’s rights in a digital world? A provocation paper. The British Academy.
12. Livingstone, S., Third, A., and Lansdown, G. (2020). Children’s rights in the digital environment: A challenging domain for evidence-based policy. In Green, L., et al. (Eds.) Routledge Companion to Digital Media and Children. Routledge.
13. Livingstone, S., Lievens, E., and Carr, J. (2020). Handbook for policy makers on the rights of the child in the digital environment. Council of Europe.
14. Stoilova, M., Bulger, M., & Livingstone, S. (2023). Do parental control tools fulfil family expectations for child protection? A rapid evidence review of the contexts and outcomes of use. Journal of Children and Media, 18(1), 29-49.
15. Kidron, B., Pothong, K., Hooper, L., Livingstone, S., Atabey, A., & Turner, S. (2023). A Blueprint for Education Data: Realising children’s best interests in digitised education. Digital Futures Commission, 5Rights Foundation.
16. Livingstone, S., Pothong, K., Atabey, A., Hooper, L., & Day, E. (2024). The Googlization of the classroom: Is the UK effective in protecting children's data and rights? Computers and Education Open.
17. Livingstone, S., Nair, A., Stoilova, M., van der Hof, S., & Caglar, C. (2024). Children’s Rights and Online Age Assurance Systems: The Way Forward. The International Journal of Children's Rights.
18. Livingstone, S., Cantwell, N., Özkul, D., Shekhawat, G., and Kidron, B. (2024). The best interests of the child in the digital environment. Digital Futures for Children centre.
19. Rahali, M., Kidron, B., and Livingstone, S. (2024). Smartphone policies in schools: What does the evidence say? Digital Futures for Children centre.
20. Livingstone, S. (2024). AI and children’s rights. Policy Insights #04 - AI and Digital Inequities. NORRAG: Network for international policies and cooperation in education and training.
21. van der Spuy, A., Witting, S., Burton, P., Day, E., Livingstone, S. & Sylwander, K.R. (2024). Guiding principles for addressing technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse. Digital Futures for Children centre.
22. Livingstone, S., Lievens, E., Graham, R., Pothong, K., Steinberg, S., & Stoilova, M. (2025). Children’s Privacy in the Digital Age: US and UK Experiences and Policy Responses. In: Christakis, D.A., Hale, L. (eds) Handbook of Children and Screens. Springer.
23. Livingstone, S. and Sylwander, K. (2025). There is no right age! The search for age-appropriate ways to support children’s digital lives and rights. Journal of Children and Media.
24. Livingstone, S. & Sylwander, K. R. (2025). Conceptualizing age-appropriate social media to support children’s digital futures. British Journal of Developmental Psychology.
An evidence base for advancing children’s rights in the digital environment
25. Livingstone, S. and Third, A. (2017) Children and young people’s rights in the digital age: An emerging agenda. New Media & Society, 19(5): 657–670.
26. Banaji, S., Livingstone, S., Nandi, A.,& Stoilova, M. (2018) Instrumentalising the digital: Findings from a rapid evidence review of development interventions to support adolescents’ engagement with ICTs in low and middle income countries. Development in Practice.
27. Livingstone, S. (2019). Are the kids alright? Intermedia, 47(3): 10-14.
28. Livingstone, S. (2022) A child rights approach to online risks and opportunities. In Jaffé, P., et al. (Eds.) Les droits de l'enfant à l’ère digitale: Faut-il protéger les enfants des écrans? (17-25) University of Geneva.
29. Livingstone, S., Stoilova, M., and Rahali, M. (2023). Realising children's rights in the digital age: The role of digital skills. ySKILLS.
30. Livingstone, S., Ólafsson, K., & Pothong, K. (2023). Digital play on children’s terms: A child rights approach to designing digital experiences. New Media & Society.
See also the DFC Global Research Database and results from the Global Kids Online network.
About the Digital Futures for Children centre
This joint LSE and 5Rights centre facilitates research for a rights-respecting digital world for children. The Digital Futures for Children centre supports an evidence base for advocacy, facilitates dialogue between academics and policymakers, and amplifies children’s voices, following the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child’s General comment No. 25.