Online platforms, connected devices, recommender systems, immersive environments, and AI-enabled services now fundamentally shape how children learn, socialise, form identities, access information, participate civically, and experience wellbeing. Digital environments are no longer peripheral to childhood; they have become core social infrastructure through which young people grow, relate to others, exercise agency, and develop as persons. This transformation is not incidental: it is structural and accelerating.
The first generation of digital regulation addressed children primarily through horizontal safeguards embedded in data protection, consumer protection, and content law, although the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) introduced child-specific provisions, notably around consent thresholds. A second generation of regulation, exemplified by the UK Online Safety Act and the EU Digital Services Act (DSA), shifted the frame from data processing to platform responsibility, imposing obligations concerning minors across recommender systems, targeted advertising, and systemic risk assessment. Emerging initiatives, most prominently the proposed EU Digital Fairness Act, signal a further regulatory turn, targeting manipulative design, exploitative commercial practices, and the structural asymmetries of power that leave children and adolescents disproportionately exposed.
Yet, despite the cumulative weight of this legislative activity, a widely shared concern persists: existing responses remain fragmented, reactive, and insufficiently matched to the speed and complexity of technological change. Anxiety about youth mental health, commercial surveillance, persuasive design, online exploitation, and the long-term developmental consequences of AI-mediated environments continues to mount and to outpace the regulatory imagination. The central challenge has shifted. It is no longer whether children require protection in digital spaces, but whether prevailing regulatory models possess the architecture, ambition, and adaptability to deliver it, while simultaneously enabling the positive digital futures that children and young people are entitled to claim.
Is a coherent framework for protecting children finally emerging or are protections dispersed across laws and regulations, which remain difficult to articulate?
Are current regulatory approaches overly focused on age verification, parental controls, and content restriction, while under-addressing business models, recommender systems, engagement optimisation, and exploitative interface design?
How should Europe reconcile child protection with user self-determination, ensuring that young people are not only shielded from harm, but also empowered to make meaningful choices, develop autonomy, and participate in digital life?
What lessons should Europe draw from developments in other jurisdictions, including online safety regimes, U.S. state reforms, and other emerging child-centred governance models?
The purpose of this special issue is to critically examine how European digital rulebooks can protect children while also promoting fair design and supporting youth autonomy. It seeks to assess whether current and proposed frameworks strike the right balance between safety, privacy, freedom, participation, and developmental well-being.
Topics covered:
- Children’s rights under European digital rulebooks
- GDPR protections for minors: consent, profiling, fairness, transparency
- The Digital Services Act, the Online Safety Act and protections for minors online
- The proposed Digital Fairness Act and youth-facing commercial practices
- Fair design, child-centred UX, and age-appropriate digital environments
- User self-determination, autonomy, and meaningful choice for young users
- Age verification, age assurance, and privacy-preserving identity models
- Recommender systems, addictive design, and engagement optimisation
- Dark patterns and manipulative interface design targeting minors
- Advertising to children and behavioural profiling
- AI systems interacting with children and young users
- Online safety duties and freedom of expression for minors
- Parental controls, family governance, and child autonomy
- Educational technology, learning analytics, and student data governance
- Mental health, wellbeing, and platform design
- Comparative lessons from Australia, the U.S., and other jurisdictions
- Institutional coordination between DPAs, consumer authorities, media regulators, and online safety regulators
Editors:
- Sophie Stalla-Bourdillon
- Henry Pierce
- Federica Paolucci
Deadlines and instructions
We welcome blog post submissions for the MediaLaws Blog, which will provide an initial platform for discussion and dissemination.
Based on the submissions received, a selection of authors will be invited to participate in a workshop (Autumn 2026). A further selection of contributions will be developed into full papers for a special issue in an international journal.
Deadlines and instructions
– Blog post submission (MediaLaws Blog): 4 July 2026 – Workshop: Autumn 2026 (date to be confirmed) – Full paper submission: January 2027 – Notification of acceptance: Spring 2027 The post should be submitted to federica.paolucci(at)unibocconi.it and giulia.bassini(at)unibocconi.it.
