Petition and open letter
Part A / For individuals
1
Safety settings switched on from the start for every child, whether or not a parent ever logs in.
2
Family safety tools are an extra layer, never a transfer of responsibility to parents and legal guardians.
3
Independent, privacy-preserving checks that the adult holds parental responsibility or legal guardianship. Only a yes or no is shared.
4
A tamper-evident record of when the platform knew a child's age and what their parent or guardian said yes or no to.
5
Checks carried out by independent providers working to open international standards, not by the platforms themselves.
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Part B / For organisations
We are organisations working with parents, legal guardians, children and young people.
In many cases, the law already requires companies to get consent from the person who holds parental responsibility before processing a child's data. A new wave of online safety laws goes further. In Europe, Brazil and a growing number of US states, platforms are now expected or required to offer family safety tools, or to link a child's account to a parent or guardian, as part of safety by design.
Yet on most platforms, AI companies and fintechs, anyone can say they're a child's parent, and nobody checks. Laws set the requirement. Global technical standards show how to meet it. The OpenID Foundation's delegated authority specification sets out how to verify that an adult holds parental responsibility, privately and against authoritative records. Work is also under way at the International Telecommunication Union to standardise how family safety tools work, so they are more protective and platforms' safety features can be audited.
What's missing is platforms putting these standards in place. Until they do, a safety tool can be turned against the child it is meant to protect, and the real parent or guardian is pushed aside.
We ask you to require:
1
Safety settings switched on from the start for every child, whether or not a parent ever logs in.
2
Family safety tools are an extra layer, never a transfer of responsibility to parents and legal guardians.
3
Independent, privacy-preserving checks that the adult holds parental responsibility or legal guardianship. Only a yes or no is shared.
4
A tamper-evident record of when the platform knew a child's age and what their parent or guardian said yes or no to.
5
Checks carried out by independent providers working to open international standards, not by the platforms themselves.