The Digital Child

Today’s children spend much of their time immersed in a digital world. The widespread distribution of smartphones in both developed and developing countries alike has given children around the globe the ability to have virtual relationships via tweeting, games, surfing, chatting, texting, and messaging, and exposes them to digital media in the form of movies, music, advertisements, books, markets, sex, and more. The immersion of childhood in an era of rapidly changing technologies raises the question of whether the 20th century legal construct developed internationally to protect children’s rights, including the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, can adequately protect children in the 21st century. This essay concludes that it does not and suggests that additional legal protections need to be further developed both domestically and internationally, especially with regard to children's privacy rights.