About the report

“Frontiers in Digital Child Safety: Designing Child-Centered Digital Ecosystems That Support Rights, Agency, and Well-Being” presents a forward-looking vision for digital child safety. Rather than relying primarily on reactive, restriction-based safety measures, the report explores innovative ways to promote digital safety through child-centered design strategies and outlines a roadmap to proactively embed safety, rights, agency, and well-being into the very fabric of digital products, services, and policies.

This report is the culmination of a year-long initiative led by an international, multi-disciplinary Working Group of researchers, designers, educators, child advocates, and policy experts. The effort was led by an academic consortium chaired by Professors Sandra Cortesi and Urs Gasser at the Technical University of Munich’s (TUM) Think Tank, in collaboration with the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University and the Department of Communication and Media Research at the University of Zurich.

Key Contributions

• Reframing Digital Child Safety as a Design Opportunity: The report moves away from reactive, restriction-based models and instead proposes child safety as an opportunity for proactive, research-informed, and child-centered forms of interventions. 
• Foundational Framework Anchored in Children’s Rights, Agency, and Well-Being: The report presents a clear normative foundation — grounded in the UNCRC — and expands on three core pillars: Centering children, supporting their agency, and promoting their well-being. These principles serve as guideposts for all proposed interventions.
• Four Strategic and Actionable Approaches to Safety: The report outlines four distinct but interconnected approaches to digital child safety:

1. Design approaches that foster trust
2. Help-seeking and reporting approaches
3. On-device interventions for conduct and contact risks
4. Educational and user-interface design approaches
   

Each includes concrete strategies, examples, and insights for implementation.

• Cross-Cutting Insights and a Call for Ecosystem-Level Change: Rather than isolated fixes, the report calls for adaptive, learning-oriented safety ecosystems built through sustained, cross-sector collaboration. It also identifies tensions that must be negotiated transparently.