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Family influencing requires new regulatory models

Children's rights in the digital environment are more than ever the focus of political debates today. While digital access is considered an essential right, risks such as the commercial exploitation of even very young children by family influencers are increasing significantly – with consequences for child development.

The right to digital participation

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child emphasizes in its General Comment No. 25 that children have a right to digital access to information. Even in school, competent media literacy is key to information and education. Experts therefore call for the expansion of media education components to enable children to acquire digital media skills from a young age.

Downside: Protection gaps and exploitation

But digital freedom also harbors dangers. Gaps in youth media protection mean that children and young people are frequently confronted unfiltered with violence, discrimination, and addictive behaviors. The monitoring body for the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child at the German Institute for Human Rights and Terre des Hommes are particularly focused on the role of family influencers. The commercial exploitation of children's private lives violates their privacy and intimacy, as well as their safety interests. The constant focus on the camera and the enormous amount of time spent recording the content endanger both the psychological development and the ability of children to form attachments.

Need for reform: Four models for regulating youth employment protection

The current debate makes it clear that the existing Youth Employment Protection Act is reaching its limits. Furthermore, there is still a lack of a shared understanding of the phenomenon of family influencing. The Monitoring Unit and Terre des Hommes address these gaps with their publication "Family Influencing and Child Rights-Based Reform Needs in the Youth Employment Protection Act" and present four regulatory models for revising the Youth Employment Protection Act (JArbSchG):

  • Option 1: Maintaining the existing legal status quo – It is conceivable to reinterpret/apply indeterminate legal terms in the legal text, taking into account new social situations, or to examine which regulations could be applied to the topic of family influencing.
  • Variant 2: Minimally invasive intervention in the JArbSchG – Targeted amendment of the JArbSchG and clarification of the extent to which the topic of family influencing falls within the scope of the JArbSchG.
  • Variant 3a: Sector-specific regulations while maintaining the existing regulatory framework of the JArbSchG, which would make the issue of family influencing very visible in the JArbSchG.
  • Variant 3b: Sector-specific regulations including a break with the existing regulatory system of the JArbSchG – It is possible to standardize further instruments, such as financial compensation, in the JArbSchG and, if necessary, to introduce a completely new section in the JArbSchG on the area of ​​family influencing.

The regulatory models presented here make a contribution to the current reform debates on children's rights and encourage further discussion. To ensure that children and young people can participate fully in the digital world without gaps in protection, the protection, participation, and promotion of children's rights in the digital sphere must be consistently considered and implemented together.

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