-1790042485049-882960215.png&w=1920&q=75)
Evidence is building on the dangers of digital platforms and social media for children. Growing up as digital natives, they navigate complex online environments that may not have their best interests at heart. Now, adding to smartphone risks comes the challenge of AI. How can we create a safe digital environment and respect children's rights when parents and policymakers are struggling to understand all the implications?
Scotland faces a critical moment in approaching children's online safety. Future wellbeing and economic growth will depend on the next generation harnessing AI opportunities effectively. Getting the best from AI, while mitigating harms, will need co-ordinated delivery of the various current initiatives. Scotland has the potential to assess best practice in other nations and create its own distinctive policy approach.
Scottish children interact with AI systems through social media algorithms, educational apps, gaming, and smart devices—often without recognising these as AI-driven. Scotland has already begun exploring the problem and possible solutions. A promising initiative by the Scottish Children's Parliament takes a rights-based approach to AI, supporting Scotland's vision of becoming a leader in trustworthy, ethical, and inclusive AI. This project highlighted children's concerns about fairness, bias, privacy, and mental health, while recognising that children need education about AI as it becomes intrinsic to their daily lives. Policy might be best developed alongside consultation with young people about technologies that affect them.
The algorithms and design features that children encounter online are rarely developed to recognise their specific developmental needs or vulnerabilities. Social media may exacerbate pre-existing issues. Economic insecurity, diminishing social institutions, and uncertainty about the future create fertile ground for digital platforms to intensify anxiety, particularly among teenagers already prone to social comparison. The evidence points to specific design features and business models that contribute to harm.
To increase engagement, recommendation algorithms can promote content encouraging negative self-image. Similarly, social validation metrics like likes and followers encourage harmful comparisons, while infinite scroll feeds remove natural stopping points, leading children to spend far more time on platforms than they intend. These engagement-focused features can disrupt sleep patterns and reduce participation in essential offline activities. And data collection practices track children's behaviour to optimise for engagement, often without meaningful consent.
Studies worldwide have found associations between digital media use and mental wellbeing. UK guidance has noted correlations between screen time and reduced physical activity, depressive symptoms, and poorer diet. The Scottish Health Survey has identified patterns of increased screen time and poorer mental wellbeing scores among Scottish children and adolescents, along with sleep quality and anxiety issues. While causality remains difficult to establish in this relatively new field, we shouldn't be surprised that commercial digital environments prioritise engagement over wellbeing.
Yet these platforms are not without perceived benefits. Content consumption alone isn't necessarily harmful - it is the social comparison and validation-seeking aspects that may be most detrimental. AI brings additional risks beyond smartphones and social media, with more opaque data control than when using a single website or app. While AI promises productivity improvements and personalised learning, it simultaneously allows information to tunnel through boundaries. AI may eventually offer a way for users to represent their own personal interests and data permissions online in virtual form, but currently ownership is easily compromised.
The UK's Online Safety Act represents a step toward holding platforms accountable for harmful content, but further changes are needed. Removing "like" counts, limiting infinite scrolling, disabling autoplay, and creating friction in addictive features could help reduce psychological impact without eliminating benefits. Tech companies have begun implementing changes, though improvements like break reminders and screen time limits remain optional rather than default for young users. However, it now appears that the UK Government will delay AI legislation as it attempts to bring technology regulation nearer alignment with the US.
Scotland's incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) into law provides a powerful framework for addressing digital wellbeing. This rights-based approach recognises children not just as vulnerable subjects needing protection but as rights-holders deserving of participation in decisions affecting them.
Foundations are already in place: Scotland has the opportunity to become a world leader in child-centred digital governance. Scotland may have little leverage directly with the big global tech companies but has influence with its schools and parents. We need clear standards for age-appropriate design, transparency, and data protection. These standards should require meaningful explanation of how AI systems work in language children can understand, and genuine options for control over personal data and algorithms.
To pull together a wide range of policies and organisations, here may be value in an independent commissioner position with the authority to set standards, monitor compliance and advise on good practice for young users. It would cover a broader range of action than existing roles and initiatives. Digital literacy education should go beyond basic online safety to include critical understanding of how AI systems work, how data is collected and used, and how to evaluate information online. Schools must incorporate robust digital citizenship and literacy, alongside mental health awareness, critical thinking about algorithms, and healthy technology usage habits.
Parents often report feeling overwhelmed by the rapid evolution of technology. Scotland should develop comprehensive resources to help parents understand digital environments, facilitate healthy conversations about technology use, and implement appropriate boundaries without cutting children off from beneficial aspects of the digital world.
Scottish universities and researchers could be encouraged to conduct Scotland-specific research on technology's impact on young people's wellbeing, ensuring policies are based on evidence relevant to Scottish youth. The goal is to create an environment where young people can access the benefits of digital connection without being subjected to features designed to manipulate their attention and emotions.
Scotland has always prioritised children's wellbeing. Now, navigating the digital age, we have an opportunity to lead in creating an online environment where young people can truly flourish. Coordinated action should bring together educators, policymakers, parents, and young people themselves to create a digital landscape that is safe and enhances our children's potential