As governments move toward social media bans for children, a deeper question emerges: what healthier infrastructures of connection are we prepared to build in their place? An essay on youth, digital literacy, belonging, and the future of meaningful child online protection.
The new paper explores how global child online protection (COP) frameworks interact with local political, cultural, and regulatory realities in Southeast Asia, and how platform dynamics, particularly TikTok, reshape the governance landscape.
A central argument is that international digital governance models do not travel intact.
This week it was my great pleasure to join an inspiring technical working group of experts and to participate and present at the 11th TWG meeting on Digital Transformation in Learning and Education organized by the ITU and UNICEF. The presentation was on the progress that my colleagues and yours truly made in the past several months on child online protection guidelines and localization processes.
First, I am happy to share that several months ago, I’ve started a new role as an expert on Child Online Protection (COP) project for the United Nations agency responsible for information and communication technologies – the ITU (International Telecommunication Union). I am serving as a national coordinator who works on developing …