Forum Los menores y el uso de la tecnología: protección legal y derechos personales

I. The ongoing digital transformation can be described through a particularly effective hermeneutic framework for the study of contemporary times, i.e., the "new world"¹ and the technological process that sustains it, as well as the subjects who find themselves inhabiting it: as has been suggested, paraphrasing the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss (1872-1950), we can consider it as a "total social fact"², since it is pervasive, omnipresent, asymmetric and powerful to the point of shaping things, behaviors, and relationships between individuals. From the perspective that is chosen to be adopted in these pages, this is especially true for those who have been immersed in it since their earliest years of life and, more broadly, for minors, often referred to as "digital natives'"³.

The aim of the present Forum is to explore, through the tools of law and philosophical reflection, certain issues resulting both from minors' access to technology and online services, and more generally to "digital environments"⁴, as well as from the use of tools and the potential they offer in constantly iridescent and rapidly changing forms.

Datafication, technological mediation, and hyper-mediation characterize the new environments in which people live, where various forms of risk⁵ can be identified and predicted alongside opportunities and potentials⁶. In this sense, following some recurring interpretations and extending the paradigm of the German sociologist Ulrich Beck (1944-2015)⁷, the current era could be defined as the "digital risk society".

For example, in addition to the many manifestations of "criminal informatics"⁸, risks can also be clearly expressed through hate speech⁹, fake news, and the manipulation of information and behaviors¹⁰, inappropriate content, various forms of ad-diction¹¹, but also the increasingly prevalent "social media challenges", which have become a significant phenomenon within the vast landscape of digital platforms. Viral practices across different regions and generations, such as the "Blackout challenge", the "Blue Whale", or the "Ice Bucket challenge", among others, are capturing the attention of audiences, observers and scholars, positioning themselves on the edge between the playful and entertaining dimension and that of risk, between gregarious as well as conformist compliance and creative, provocative innovation¹².

Beyond these sectoral aspects, which certainly deserve dedicated attention (also with "field studies", within the digital environments themselves), when it comes to protecting the rights of minors, the issue of risk has a much broader scope, to the point that it has shaped a paradigm connected to the almost obsessive search for security. This issue has deep roots, but it is enough here to highlight one aspect, which has been aptly described in the following terms: "If the quest for security interacts intensely with the law, continuously pushing to redefine both the spaces of individual freedom and those for the exercise of public and private powers, [...] the presence of technology imposes itself as a "reagent", provoking consequences that can be highlighted from a dual perspective: on the one hand, the relationship between law and security in a context marked by the massive presence of technology; on the other hand, the relationship between law and technology, in a context characterized by the obsessive quest for security"¹³.

II. It is around the notion of risk that the major regulatory measure revolves (the AI Act), recently approved by the European Union after a long gestation, a detailed preparatory process, and extensive discussion¹⁴. The Act prominently features the concepts of "high-risk" and "systemic risk", aimed at defining a series of prohibitions concerning "cases" and "contexts of use" subject to regulation.

In this scenario, where the issue of legal regulation is strongly asserted¹⁵, challenging the idea of a spontaneous order of the internet¹⁶ (and, indeed, even the very paradigm of neoliberal law itself¹⁷), efforts will be made, on the one hand, to both highlight recent measures aimed at contrasting certain phenomena (such as the actions of the AGCM - Italian Competition Authority¹⁸) and preventing them (e.g., see the Digital Rights Charter developed in Spain with the aim to "protect minors in the digital context"¹⁹); on the other hand, to outline an idea of digital citizenship and digital agency, the realization of which- through a promotional key that transcends the security paradigm - could be useful for effectively safeguarding the freedoms and rights of individuals (particularly minors) in the face of the increasing convergence between market and security policies²⁰.

The various contributions will also focus on binding EU legislation, particularly the GDPR (2016), the Digital Services Act (2020), and amendments to age-related regulations in European border control procedures²¹, in light of the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (but also, in the European context, the Charter of Fundamental Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights), with the aim to suggest ways to balance the protection of rights through regulatory tools (and thus through norms) with the promotion of children's agency in decisionmaking processes (and thus through participatory practices of agency²²), with particular regard on "digital environments".

III. This is a new frontier in the debate on the rights of minors, continuously shifting between "old" and "new" rights²³, and which, upon closer examination, implies the same "social basis of rights": agency²⁴.

As has been emphasized, "social participation can be intended as participation in communication, with adults and other children"²⁵, as well as, in a broader sense, as it occurs fluidly in social channels, with other adolescents and young people. From a Luhmannian perspective²⁶, communication can be seen as a combination of action, understanding and information.

Information is constructed through the joint basis of action and understanding: information cannot be produced or understood by action alone; both action, which produces information, and understanding, which communicates it, are necessary. Moreover, understanding relates not only to information but also to the reasons or intentions behind the action: the realization of communication requires clarification of the meaning of the action. Without understanding there is no communication; however, understanding is only made visible in communication through new action. Therefore, while action alone does not accomplish communication, it is equally essential as understanding for communication to occur.

In this context, social participation - clearly highlighted in the scenario of the rapid development of new technologies and their impact - "can mean both action and understanding: however, only participation as action is visible in communication and can be observed as 'active' participation". Active participation takes place in various social systems involving children, adolescents, and young people; "however, it is evident that active participation does not necessarily imply having a significant influence on communication"²⁷.

The concept of "agency", borrowed from general sociology²⁸, thus denotes a particular form of participation that manifests autonomy in action, meaning the ability to choose between possible actions, and therefore requires awareness. In the context of the digital society, this means being aware of the use of devices and technological tools, as well as of the effects that these tools may generate in digital environments, but it also involves navigating in an environment composed of data and information, now referred to as the "infosphere"²⁹, which raises new questions for law, starting with private law³⁰.

Within this framework, the right to participation alone is not sufficient to ensure the importance of the actions of children and adolescents: only the right to agency can be considered a fundamental social basis of the rights of minors, as it allows them to actively participate in the choice and transformation of the social conditions affecting their actions and experiences³¹, starting with those exercised and experienced online and in digital environments, in this "new world" which is often the given world for them³².

The approach outlined above and referenced to in various forms, whether explicitly or implicitly, in different contributions, seems an interesting path to follow, capable of going beyond the "risk paradigm" with its constraints, fears, and nearly inevitable obsessions.

In this different and alternative perspective, the right to agency combines choice and knowledge: "the right to choose requires the recognition of responsibility in the production of knowledge. Thus, the attribution of the right to choose is subordinated to the attribution of rights and responsibilities in the production of autonomous knowledge"³³. For this reason, agency manifests itself primarily as epistemic authority, namely both as a right and as a responsibility in accessing and producing knowledge³⁴: the right to access and produce knowledge (in its multiple facets) precedes and conditions the right to choose, and thus the power of choice itself. This is even more true in the digital dimension and spaces that are increasingly being defined as a "digital society" and a "digital age"³⁵, where these aspects intertwine with socialization and entertainment in new and surprising ways.

All in all, what emerges from the contributions is a different picture from the one presented by the media and disseminated in common sense, highlighting the complex network of interactions between minors, platforms and contexts within a digital landscape that, while characterized by risks (which undoubtedly exist), is also permeated by new spaces and modes of relationship and engagement.

Additionally, it is marked by a variety of social dynamics and techno-cultural dimensions that, beyond rules and risk prevention measures (and, in some cases, appropriate prohibitions and sanctions), primarily require awareness and, consequently, practices of relationship, education, and social engagement within the open and borderless spaces of digital citizenship.

The path outlined - which seems to allow for the integration of knowledge, awareness and power³⁶ through the practices of socialization and interaction enabled by the network in the digital society - always has the potential to manage the tensions that the impact of technologies imposes on people's lives, starting with the youngest, and can, in some way, follow the trail that a distinguished legal scholar with profound philosophical sensitivity, such as Stefano Rodotà (1933-2017), has indicated in his largely pioneering works³⁷, seeking a difficult balance between legal norms and vital worlds³⁸, which today are inevitably crossed by flows of information and data, as well as by new forms of interaction mediated by technologies, as young people teach us every day.

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Notes

Author notes