On May 25, 2022, the Irish Data Protection Commission (“DPC”) issued 3 short guides for children, with the objective of raising awareness among adolescents about data protection and their privacy rights, as well as serving as a resource “for parents, educators and anyone [else] interested in children’s safety and wellbeing online”. The 3 guides, which are intended for teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18, are entitled:
- “Your Personal Information and Data protection – What’s it all about?”;
- “My data protection rights”; and
- “Top tips for keeping your data safe online”.
The guides can be accessed here. Each guide provides a clear and straightforward narrative, with the third offering “15 top tips” for safe online engagement.
These guides follow from the Irish DPC’s guidelines for organizations on how to process children’s personal data in accordance with EU and Irish privacy law, entitled the “Fundamentals on a Child-Oriented Approach to Data Processing” (“Fundamentals”), which the DPC published in December 2021 (see our prior blog posts on the topic here and here). Among other things, the Irish Fundamentals emphasize the importance of providing privacy disclosures to children in a manner that is appropriately tailored to their age group and level of comprehension. Accordingly, the DPC now seems to be providing an example of sorts on how to draft language for a younger audience, by publishing these child-facing guides on the topics of privacy and data protection.
Protecting and empowering children and vulnerable groups in the digital world is a particular focus for the DPC and is one of the key priorities of its 2022-2027 Regulatory Strategy.