The US Department of Justice announced that TikTok and its parent company, ByteDance, have agreed to pay US$400 million to settle a lawsuit over children’s privacy. US authorities accused the video-sharing platform of contravening the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act by allowing children under 13 to use its services and collecting their personal data without parental consent.
Children use short-form video platforms, games, social media and even generative artificial intelligence (AI) every day, but 10-year-olds are typically not capable of making decisions like adults.
In the AI era, the protection of children’s personal data deserves attention. The searches, viewing habits, location data, voice recordings, images, social connections and usage time that children leave behind from such an early age can accumulate to form a digital identity. Platforms do not even need to know a child’s name; through device identifiers and usage patterns, they can infer a child’s interests, emotions and daily habits.
However, children cannot truly understand how long their data would be stored, who they would be shared with or how they might be used when they click “agree.”
Protecting children’s data cannot rest solely on informed consent, as clicking an agreement button does not represent a voluntary decision.
Although the Personal Data Protection Act (個人資料保護法) addresses issues surrounding children’s personal data, more must be done to address the power of major platforms and establish principles of the “best interests of the child” and “privacy by default.”
When a platform knows that the user is a child, it should automatically disable targeted advertising, limit the collection of location data, reduce cross-platform tracking, prevent accounts from being made public and restrict contact between children and unfamiliar adults. This is the essence of “privacy by design” — integrating privacy protections into product design from the outset rather than relying on post hoc remedies.
Short-form video platforms know what children like and can determine what they see next. Infinite scrolling, autoplay, constant notifications and gamified rewards can encourage children to use them for longer periods, affecting sleep, attention spans, and physical and mental development. Legislation surrounding children’s digital safety should address addictive design and algorithmic recommendations.
Taiwan must learn that the burden of digital governance cannot be placed entirely on families. It is unfair to expect parents to combat the entire attention economy by simply banning their children from using smartphones. The government should establish systems for age-appropriate design, data minimization, high-privacy defaults, advertising restrictions and algorithmic risk assessments.
A child’s entry into the Internet should not mean surrendering their childhood to platforms for permanent recording; the law should ensure that children retain the right to determine who they are.
Roger Lo is a freelancer.
Translated by Kyra Gustavsen
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