Lawyer to sue tech firms over children’s right to a family life
SOCIAL media and gaming firms could face multi-million pound lawsuits for developing “addictive” technology that breaches a child’s human right to respect for a family life, says a top privacy lawyer.
Jenny Afia, a member of the Children Commissioner’s digital task force, says the damage caused to family life – from denying children sleep and a more active outdoor life to disrupting their schoolwork and mental well-being – amounts to a breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act.
She believes the way firms including Facebook, Youtube and Instagram have designed their technology to be addictive and keep children online undermines their first line of defence under the Act that users could always switch off their devices.
She says her case is backed by evidence not only from psychologists identifying “hooks” like night-time notifications and auto-play videos, but also from industry insiders such as Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook, who admitted applications were “all about consuming as much of [people’s] time and attention as possible.”
Ms Afia, who has represented Madonna, Adele, J K Rowling and Sir Elton John, specialises in taking on tech companies and famously reduced Instagram’s 17 pages of terms-and-conditions legalise to one child-friendly page of plain English. She says she is willing to take on a family’s case herself. Her move follows The Daily Telegraph’s launch of a campaign to place a legal duty of care on tech firms, and the World Health Organisation’s classifying “gaming disorder” as a medical condition eligible for NHS treatment.
“Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights states everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence,” says Ms Afia, a lawyer with Schillings who works with the 5Rights foundation to safeguard children’s development in the digital world.
“My argument is that the firms’ persuasive design strategies – or attention traps – are keeping children captive, rather than active, online. As a result, their autonomy and free will is being eroded, with huge consequences for their physical and mental development.”
The Act allows for the right to be “qualified” but only in the case of national security or public safety, not for commercial interests.
A legal team taking on the social media and gaming giants would not have to prove specific harm although cases, highlighted by The Daily Telegraph, of teenagers hospitalised as a result of their addiction to video games could be used to determine damages.
Denying they design their software to be addictive, Snapchat and Facebook say they aim to encourage people to develop positive and meaningful relationships offline as well as online.
Facebook says it has spent millions of pounds on such research and Snapchat claims it offers four chances where parents can ensure that their children’s screen time is restricted.