Colouring Inside the Lines: Using Technology to Regulate Children’s Behaviour Online

Online safety for children and teenagers is a concern for regulators, policy makers and technology developers. One of the ways to create safer online environments for this group is through ‘technological influencing’, i.e. through the use of technical tools. Such tools shape what children and teenagers can and cannot do when they go online. They limit children’s access to certain content and make certain actions impossible. Technological influencing comes in various forms, some very stringent (techno-regulation), others less so (nudging, persuasion). Van den Berg discusses the ideas underlying technological influencing and looks at different cases thereof in the domain of online safety for children. Currently, technology developers exclusively rely on techno-regulation to ensure that youngsters will ‘color inside the lines’, i.e. they leave children no room to manoeuvre, to experiment. Providing them with nudging mechanisms, however, would teach them more about potential risks, and hence make them more risk-aware and resilient. This is especially important for older children.