Digital Environments

Children's health and wellbeing is increasingly shaped by digital environments that operate across borders, sectors, and policy domains. Platform design, algorithmic systems, and data-driven commercial models influence what children see, experience, internalise, and do — often in ways not visible to users or regulators.

Digital environments shape the social, cognitive, and emotional conditions in which mental health develops, while also influencing behaviours related to immunisation, physical activity, exposure to marketing, and early development. These effects are cumulative and shaped by inequality — with some children more exposed to risks and less able to access protective supports. Addressing digital risks in isolation overlooks how these exposures interact and reinforce one another over time.

Digital environments should therefore be understood as part of the wider commercial and social determinants of children's health and wellbeing.

Several international and regional frameworks support a shift from viewing digital spaces as a technical or behavioural issue to understanding them as a structural influence on children's health, development, and wellbeing.

UNICEF's Digital Technologies, Child Rights and Well-Being Policy Brief situates digital environments within existing obligations to protect children's rights to health, development, protection, and participation, highlighting how digital access, risks, and benefits intersect with social inequalities.

WHO guidance on the digital determinants of youth mental health further reinforces this perspective by explaining how platform design, social dynamics, and commercial incentives shape mental health outcomes at population level. Together, these resources frame digital environments as part of the broader determinants of mental health.

National initiatives — such as the UK feasibility study on smartphones and social media, Australia's Growing up in an online world national conversation, and Ireland's Online Health Taskforce — illustrate how governments are increasingly applying this system-level framing in practice. These examples show approaches that acknowledge uncertainty, bring together multiple policy sectors, and move beyond reliance on parental responsibility alone.

Legal and policy tools developed by WHO and UNICEF support governments in interpreting how existing child protections translate into digital environments, in line with General Comment No. 25 on children's rights in relation to the digital environment and the guidance set out in Best Interests of the Child in Relation to the Digital Environment. Together, these frameworks reinforce the obligation to ensure that children's best interests are a primary consideration in the design, regulation, and oversight of digital services and commercial practices.

Resources such as the WHO CLICK Framework and the UNICEF Food Marketing Legal Toolkit help policymakers examine whether current rules on marketing, data protection, and consumer safety adequately cover influencer marketing, personalised advertising, gaming environments, and platform-based promotion. Rather than prescribing specific legislative models, they help governments identify where gaps arise when offline protections are applied to online formats.

WHO's work on the digital determinants of youth mental health, together with regional regulatory developments such as the EU's Digital Services Act and emerging lessons documented in Keeping children safe online, provide important reference points for understanding platform responsibility.

Taken together, they support a shift away from reactive, content-by-content approaches toward clearer expectations that online platforms identify, assess, and mitigate systemic risks to children arising from algorithmic design, content amplification, and data-driven engagement models. For national authorities, these frameworks help illuminate how health, child protection, and digital regulation intersect, and how routine, risk-based oversight of platform systems and business practices can address upstream drivers of harm.

Public health bodies in several countries have issued national recommendations on children's digital media use, demonstrating how governments translate evidence into age-appropriate, health-focused guidance. These examples show how digital media is framed as a developmental and wellbeing issue, balancing recognition of risks with acknowledgement of benefits, and supporting families and professionals without relying on punitive or overly simplistic limits.

International guidance emphasises that regulatory measures need to be complemented by capability-building approaches, particularly for families facing disadvantage. WHO and UNICEF resources on digital literacy, parenting support, and children and youth participation highlight how children's ability to benefit from digital environments — and avoid harm — is partly shaped by unequal access to guidance, supervision, and skills.

These inequalities are reflected in mental health outcomes, with children facing disadvantage often experiencing both higher exposure to risks and fewer protective buffers. This underscores the importance of framing investments in digital literacy, parenting support, and safe school environments as integral to equitable public health and child development strategies.

Independent advisory reports, such as France's Children and Screens, illustrate how governments have commissioned evidence-based reviews to inform public debate, examining screen use in terms of development, wellbeing, time, quality, and context.

Several of the referenced resources highlight that digital environments are not only sources of risk, but also potential channels for prevention, promotion, and access to support. WHO guidance and national digital mental health strategies illustrate how digital tools can be integrated into public health promotion, immunisation outreach, early intervention, and service navigation — provided that standards for safety, quality, privacy, and equity are in place.

This evidence helps policymakers move beyond purely protective approaches and consider how public systems can actively shape healthier digital ecosystems.

Guidance from WHO and UNICEF on child and youth participation in digital policy underlines the value of children's lived expertise. These resources support policymakers in recognising that young people understand how platforms function, how marketing is embedded, and which risks are most salient in practice. Involving children and adolescents meaningfully in policy design strengthens relevance, legitimacy, and effectiveness — particularly in fast-changing digital environments where formal monitoring often lags behind lived experience.

National examples — particularly the Australian national conversation and the Irish Online Health Taskforce — also illustrate consultative and participatory approaches, involving young people, parents, professionals, and civil society in shaping policy understanding.