Big tech plays a pivotal role in shaping online experiences of children, young people, and their parents. The Parents International team finds it very important to have a dialogue with these companies, especially since most of them are based in the US and thus rarely consider the rights of children or the rights and duties of their parents.

We were very happy to be invited to the flagship event “Growing Up in the Digital Age” on 10-11 March to present our standpoint based on the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and our most recent research in the Participate, Drone and EFFEct projects. There was a lot of very positive feedback – and the usual sceptics who still consider parents incapable of educating their children.

On the first day of the event, a special expert workshop was dedicated to the trusted adults in the lives of children. The Council of Europe presented the Digital Citizenship Education framework and tools that we have been promoting as part of our partnership with them. They have recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Google, and it will hopefully lead to a trilateral collaboration including us.

Four relevant NGO projects were presented and discussed in the workshop. While the Finnish NGO Protect Children presented a programme that did not seem to be an asset- and rights-based approach, the others were really interesting. JA Africa highlighted the importance of culturally sensitive, localised solutions, Bibliothéque Sans Frontiers from Belgium introduced their work done to empower parents. The most aligned with our activities and messages is Fondazione Mondo Digitale. We hope we can collaborate them in the future sharing experiences and resources.

This expert event provided the opportunity to present research evidence on trusted adults, partly from the research of two Participate Doctoral Candidates, Anastasiia Petrova (University of Turku, doing her secondment with Parents International at the time of the event) and our own Luca László, partly from the qualitative interviews our team conducted in the Drone project and the quantitative research data from EFFEct. We had the opportunity to share about the high level of trust in parents and family members, the lack of trust in teachers and school staff, and the need to redefine vulnerability in digital realities.

The second day was mostly dedicated to presenting the family-facing tools Google and YouTube have developed. Dr. Garth Graham’s presentation on the family experiences YouTube is offering and its values from his perspective as a high-level executive of the company, but also a medical doctor and a father, was refreshing and promising.

Although he only finished his speech by emphasising the importance of prioritising resilience building and empowerment over restrictions, his overall tone from the very beginning was on how important it is not to rob children and parents of the good experiences of growing up and parenting like it was in previous decades, and warned about potential although possibly unintended negative consequences of well-meaning interventions, as well as the importance of not preventing access.

On the other hand, an enthusiastic presentation of Google’s parental control tools was totally shocking. The tools being deployed as new features include very easy-to-use surveillance and policing tools that parents can now access for Android devices. The tools are highly problematic from both a legal and a pedagogical/psychological perspective. This article does not offer enough space for analysing them in detail, but the Parents International team surely needs to scrutinise it in detail and start an information campaign for parents on these problems.

The tools allow parents to switch off access to their children without any warning at any moment. It operates on the basis of a false assurance that children agree on their parents using it since the tool can only be installed on a child’s phone if the parent has physical access to it. The child has no way to negotiate its use after installation, and they don’t get any warning before their phone becomes inaccessible.

Another very interesting presentation was done by a former very high-level counter-terrorist agent of the USA, currently working at Google as a VP for “Trust and Safety”, Christy Abizaid. She explained how they are training AI to be biased and not provide answers to certain questions and requests in the name of safety for all users, but especially for users who are minors according to their registration.

These platforms still don’t mention the abolition of the minimum registration age – something Parents International has been advocating for over a decade -, also as a solution for minors being properly protected. One parent mentioned that their children are not even registered with a fake, 2-3 years older age, but until the age of 13, they are using the parents’ full access adult accounts.

One of the most interesting agenda points was a youth panel with teenagers from various European countries, reflecting on the findings of the Future Report . The participants, all active digital tools users and creators, were asked if they learnt anything at school that supports their online activities. The unanimous answer – fully aligned with our findings in the EFFEct research – was “no”. They were also asked to formulate one true or false statement based on the report, and the audience was asked to vote if the statement is true or false.

The overwhelming majority of the participants got all but one statement right. The true statement that about a third of teenagers consider their parents as the primary source of information regarding their online life was considered false by nearly everybody. Not surprisingly, our main collaborator from the Council of Europe knew it was a correct statement.

Young people were also asked about their opinions on bans and restrictions, and their views were highly divergent. Some of them said that people younger than them should be restricted, not remembering what it was like for them when they were the younger ones, while some of them had very strong opinions about saying no to any bans.

In one of the breaks, we had the opportunity to have a short exchange with a member of the UK House of Lords, a former Labour MP who was also with the Liberal Democrats for some time, and who is one of the initiators of the planned social media ban. It was the first opportunity to ask a pro-ban person about their motivation. For her, the legislative restriction is the best way to bring about cultural change. A very interesting standpoint from a declared liberal, but also a shocking opinion for any real educator.

More from Parents International

Building Alliances for Online Safety – London

Parents’ Perspectives on Digital Literacy, AI, and Better-prepared Teachers

Digital Citizenship Education: A Bold Step Toward a Smarter Future

Parents at the Heart of AI-Ready Digital Citizenship – IPA at GeNeMe 2025