Government digital policies and children’s rights in Uruguay: An assessment framed by the UN CRC’s dimensions of provision,protection and participation

Abstract

By 2015, one-third of internet users around the world were under the age of 18, almost half of which were living in the so-called ‘Global South’. In light of this, literature from the field of children’s online rights has become increasingly critical of the lack of engagement in internet governance discussions globally with the United Nations (UN) Convention of the Rights of the Child (CRC). Revisions of the CRC for its 25th anniversary influenced scholarship proposing using it as a guiding framework to identify and regress current deficits amongst its pillars of provision, protection and participation. This has triggered debates by evidencing how dominant strategies have been overly focused on facilitating access, with issues of online protection often being ignored and at times even hindering the almost absent considerations to child’s right to participation. Framed within a national Digital Agenda initially based on a One-Laptop-Per-Child program (Plan Ceibal), the Uruguayan government managed to effectively bridge the ‘digital divide’ in access to laptops and internet amongst its youngest population. This yielded significant impacts on low-income households and its achievements allowed the country to receive frequent praise by International Organisations. This study consists of an analysis of government digital policies focused on children in Uruguay between 2009 and 2019. To facilitate this, the CRC was used as a framework to categorise key features of the principal strategies that have been implemented. It argues that while great advances have been made in terms of digital access, this has not been sufficiently accompanied with comprehensive and child-centred solutions that encompass regulations and children and adult digital education. These are fundamental aspects for promoting a critical engagement with digital technologies and tailoring strategies for digital policies championing the best interest of children and Uruguay’s digital future.

Keywords

children data protection child rights online digital citizenship digital education

Introduction

Rights-based approaches for children online policy

Since its 25th anniversary, the United Nations (UN) Convention for the Rights of the Child (CRC) has been focused on enabling that its most widely ratified international treaty applies to the digital ecosystem (UN OHCHR, 2014). To redress this, children’s rights online scholars Livingstone and Bulger (2014) proposed framing strategies guided by the CRC pillars of provision, protection and participation to facilitate comprehensive approaches. These have pointed at how dominant approaches have been overly focused on rapidly facilitating access to digital technologies, with issues of protection often being ignored or even hindering an almost absent consideration to children’s participation (Third et al., 2019).

Concerns around the CRC’s fulfilment online are embedded within a context of reports showcasing children representing one in every three individuals online, a proportion staggering amongst countries from the so-called ‘Global South’¹ (Livingstone et al., 2015). A recent rise in the global attention to issues of child online protection and rights can be observed through the trending of the ‘digital citizenship’ catchphrase (Noula, 2018). Previously, these themes had often been fluctuating in public agendas, connected to what Facer (2012) signalled as a ‘moral panic’, based on adult-centred negative representations of children’s misuse and abuse of the internet often fuelled by the media.

The popularity of digital citizenship has long been established in countries of the ‘Global North’, especially in the European Union (EU). This can be seen through the extensive regional and distributed work of the EU Kids Online (EUKO) network since 2005 (Livingstone and Haddon, 2009). Attuned to global trends, EUKO has been responsible for the growth in scholarly work calling for rights-based approaches. The timing of this has been connected to debates in the EU over specific considerations for children while creating the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) (Jasmontaite and De Hert, 2014; Van der Hof et al., 2014).

EUKO has expanded internationally with its Global Kids Online (GKO) (2020) network showcasing pressing questions on how the CRC has been especially limited in the ‘Global South’ (Livingstone and Bulger, 2014). In this context, the GKO scholars have urged that issues on the digital policy in regard to children should no longer mostly rely on their self-regulation, extending this responsibility to multi-stakeholders such as public, private, international and academic actors. To effectively do this it is highlighted that a shift in policies is fundamental towards child-centred strategies and promoting an education for a critical engagement with digital technologies (Emejulu and McGregor, 2019; Livingstone and O’Neill, 2014).

Uruguay’s digital agenda

Uruguay’s achievements around digital policies have been recognised for a decade by the International Telecommunications Union’s (ITU) Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Development Index (2019) and the UN’s E-Government and E-Participation Indexes (ITU, 2019; UN, 2020). Uruguay’s top positions resulted from the implementation of a Digital Agenda since 2006 with the creation of the Agency for the Electronic Government and Information and Knowledge Society (AGESIC). Plan Ceibal (2017) was amongst its main strategies presented as an ICT social inclusion and education programme. Between 2007 and 2009 all public-school students and teachers received laptops and schools were connected to the internet. Ceibal was influenced by the 2005 World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) convened by the UN and ITU to bridge ‘digital divides’ (ITU, 2005) with early evidence presenting these amplifying social exclusion (Warschauer, 2002).

The Digital Agenda’s rapid impact is best represented by the fact that in 2007 households from the highest income quintile had almost 13 times as much access to computers over those in the lowest quintile; a difference that was narrowed to 1.2 times by 2010 and has since remained stable (Plan Ceibal, 2017: 29). Disadvantaged sectors were reached through targeting schools given that poverty stayed concentrated amongst Uruguay’s youngest population.² Since the Digital Agenda was launched, its scope and depth has been broadened. In this light, the aim of this research is to assess the Uruguayan government’s digital policies in relation to children by applying a CRC-guided methodology.

This study’s relevance is based on its contribution in representing a first effort to conduct a comprehensive analysis of Uruguay’s Digital Agenda. Moreover, it hinges upon Uruguay’s case being often represented as leading in international rankings (UN, 2020). Therefore, a critical engagement with its strengths and limitations is needed. Finally, it provides a fresh contribution to this scholarship given that the literature review of this study has identified an absence of similar rights-based applications to assess digital policies in regard to children in third countries.

Research questions and methodology

The research questions aimed at exploring (a) to what extent has Uruguay’s public digital policies implemented between 2009 and 2019 facilitated the integral fulfilment of the CRC?; (b) what trends in this regard were observed through time?; and (c) what could be the opportunities to repair the policies’ missing links with the CRC? The methodology included the analysis of relevant government policies and programmes implemented in this period of time and focused on children’s digital experience. These included ones related to digital access, digital literacy, communication campaigns, research and legislations. This study adheres to the definition of the ‘child’ of the CRC which encompasses individuals under the age of 18.

For the fieldwork, official reports and website information were surveyed from the AGESIC, Ceibal, the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) and the National Administration of Public Education (ANEP). This information was validated and complemented in conversations with four representatives of these institutions between February and October of 2020. This research builds upon the researcher’s participation in the AGESIC’s ‘digital citizenship group’³ constituted by public, academic and civil society organisations (AGESIC, 2020). The data analysis was qualitative, identifying relevant themes by engaging in an iterative process guided by the CRC pillars, narrowing upon special Articles and evidence in this field noted by children’s rights online scholars (Livingstone and Bulger, 2014).

Review of literature: A CRC roadmap for the digital era

In this section, main aspects of the scholarly work from the EUKO and GKO proposing the CRC-based frameworks will be summarised and complemented with research from outside this network. Additional scholarly work addressed issues related to digital education and children’s online privacy, data protection and participation. The section is divided into the CRC’s pillars of provision, protection and participation whose structure will be reflected in the following analysis section. It is important to highlight that it is not aimed to analyse the adequacy of this approach applied to the field of child rights online, however, it intends to present itself as a resource to reflect on it.

Connections between human rights and online engagement are traced back to the start of the New Millennium in the discourse of International Organisations (IO) (UNDP, 2001) and through the convening of the 2003 and 2005 WSIS and the Millennium and Sustainable Goals (UN General Assembly, 2015). Differences delve in recent standings calling for multi-stakeholder responsibilities and a special attention to the rights to privacy, protection and freedom of expression (UN Human Rights Council, 2016). Attuned to the latest tendencies, scholars from the GKO network, Livingstone and Bulger (2014) highlighted the following CRC Articles:

For the pillar of provision, the right to education (Article 28) is significant as it impacts children’s abilities for online protection and participation. References to ‘digital education’, understood as the process of teaching and learning with and about digital technologies (Bayne and Ross, 2011), have been consistently brought to the foreground to close ‘digital divides’. These were initially defined as a spectrum of proficiency or a process in regard to appropriating ICT. In this respect, not implementing digital education policies could result in amplifying social inequalities due to relying on individuals’ own context and abilities to close the digital gap (Van Dijk, 2017; Warschauer, 2002).

Directly related to education, Livingstone and Bulger (2014) pinpoint the relevance of equipping children for life-long development, respect of human rights and being responsible for sustaining the environment and a free society (Article 29). Other CRC Articles referenced from the pillar of provision are related to promoting children’s recreational spaces (Article 31) and the pertinence of providing digital resources, public and commercial, that are inclusive and accessible (Article 17). This can mean in social and cultural ways, by making these available in relevant local languages and adequate for children with different disabilities and disadvantages as one example.

With regards to protection, the underscored CRC Articles are related to preventing child abuse and neglect (Article 19) and other forms that can curtail their wellbeing (Article 36), such as sexual abuse (Article 34), and securing materials affecting their development (Article 17e) (Livingstone and Bulger, 2014). The popularity of issues of children’s online protection grew alongside the trend of ‘digital citizenship’ as a buzzword. Related to this, prevalent understandings from this field received criticisms for its adult normative style. These deemed children as naïve, misusing technologies and limited to concerns over pornography, ‘grooming’⁴ and cyberbullying (Emejulu and McGregor, 2019; Facer, 2012; Noula, 2018).

Infringements of children and their family’s privacy, reputation and preservation of identity (Articles 16 and 8) are also contained in the pillar of protection. These are related to the severe effects that the increasing data collection and mining practices from government, schools and tech companies can have, curtailing children’s rights to privacy and lifelong wellbeing (Hope, 2013, 2018; Livingstone and Third, 2017; UN OHCHR, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). Digital regulations to safeguard children are often labelled as ‘complex’ to implement jurisdiction, reliably identifying individuals by age and varying cross-cultural understandings of what is age appropriate. Efforts in this sense have been often disregarded, privileging adults’ rights and leaving children and their families solely bearing responsibility (Livingstone and O’Neill, 2014).

Finally, in review of the pillar of participation, the Articles bound to freedom of expression (Article 13), association, participation (Articles 15 and 12) and implementing solutions that are in children’s best interest (Article 3) were highlighted. Livingstone and Bulger (2014) reference the importance of striving to include ‘all children in diverse societal processes, including consulting them on matters of education, research and ICT governance’ (p. 320). These remarks are embedded within an epoch that, especially after the CRC’s 25th anniversary, recognises that policies at global scale have failed to compromise with the Convention’s principle of participation (Livingstone and Third, 2017).

Exercises to redress the absence of children’s engagement in spaces of decision-making are expressed in the IOs agendas. For example, this was seen with Malala Yousafzai becoming the youngest Nobel Prize laureate in 2014 at 17 years old and 15-year-old Greta Thunberg speaking at the UN Climate Change Conference in 2018. Nevertheless, CRC-framed approaches signal that child-centred solutions should entail a continuous ‘iterative and collaborative dialogue’ (Third et al., 2014: 39) rather than a ‘one-off’ instance. Including children’s participation according to their evolving capacities is central as it is also connected with the compliance of the pillars of provision, protection, and better assuring that children’s best interest are indeed considered.

Analysis

This section is organised following the intertwined CRC pillars of provision, protection and participation as presented in the above section. To provide an overview of Uruguay’s digital policies related to children, it delves into a diverse array of critical aspects discussed internationally in this field. It aims at discussing the extent to which the government’s digital policies have engaged with the CRC, identifying currents between 2009 and 2019 and reflecting on the opportunities to meet its unaccomplished aspects. Questions are presented over the effectiveness of ICT provision policies, the significantly late consideration and selection of issues on online protection and the near absence of child participation in the policy agenda.

The following table summarises the main issues addressed according to the CRC principles:

Provision	Protection	Participation
ICT access.	Online risks addressed.	Evidence based digital policies.
Localised digital education resources.	Data protection.	Child-centred digital policies.
Digital education.	Digital education.	Digital education

A swift and inclusive solution bridging the gap in access

Uruguay’s Digital Agenda was kickstarted by Ceibal, a policy that remained amongst the flagships of the left-wing party in power (‘Frente Amplio’) through its three consecutive terms in power (Forni, 2019). Ceibal was presented as prioritising social inclusion and attending to children’s needs by delivering low-cost laptops designed for educational purposes (‘XO⁵’ or ‘Ceibalitas’) and connecting schools and several public spaces to open broadband internet. To contextualise Uruguay’s achievements, this meant that by 2016 82% of children in this country accessed the internet through schools, while 64% did so in Chile and 32% in Brazil (UNICEF, 2018: 53).

Since Ceibal was launched, access to laptops expanded amongst the population given that prices dropped significantly. However, Ceibal’s role in providing access to these devices prevailed through time amongst low-income households. By 2015, 6 in every 10 households in this context with school aged children had exclusively Ceibalitas (Plan Ceibal, 2017: 28–29). At the same time, smartphone access broadened across sectors of the population and became by far preferred by children over laptops. The local GKO survey, conducted nationally amongst children between the ages of 9 and 17, revealed that:

“48% of children report using their mobile phones to access the internet “almost all the time” or “several times a day”. Daily connectivity drops to 17% if done through laptops, 9% desktop PCs, 6% tablets and 2% video games” (UNICEF, 2018: 51).

Although smartphones have widened internet access globally, extended tasks can be done through laptops which can enable greater opportunities. Uruguayan children preferring mobile phones could translate into their online activities being narrowed to communication and entertainment purposes. On a daily basis, children say they mostly chat and watch Youtube (50%), and substantially lower rates claim to be ‘learning something new’ (19%) or reading ‘news online’ (12%). This scenario presents a turn in the digital divide towards educational policies that could guide children into appropriating laptops, diversifying their digital skills and recognising these as learning enablers. This new gap was prevalent in disadvantaged sectors, as the GKO study revealed, all the digital literacy skills were bound to social inequality factors (UNICEF, 2018: 59, 62).

Digital education: voluntary, insufficient and uneven across subsystems

A formal digital education is necessary to critically engage with ICT and its opportunities, encompassing skills that can enable balancing the protection and participation online. In Uruguay, this pressing need had been signalled in an earlier study which also observed how this was entwined with children’s socioeconomic context:

“the differentiated trends in the evolution of the use of Ceibalitas by children show how important encouragement by educational centres or adults in the child’s background is to consolidate the meaningful use of computers and contribute to the narrowing of the digital divide” (Pittaluga and Rivoir, 2012: 157).

This was highlighted after noticing that in around 89 out of 146 Ceibal beneficiary households the use of laptops decreased, in both children and adults, as the initial enthusiasm of receiving the computer passed, a pattern acute amongst low-income families.

Ceibal’s scope predominantly favouring the ‘have’ and ‘have not’ approach to the digital gap becomes evident when analysing the programme’s stages description. These state that from 2010 it shifted from laptops to making available educational resources, such as an open library and Math (PAM) platforms (Plan Ceibal, 2017: 63). Ceibal’s later stage was named ‘deep learning’ and started in 2013 when it joined the global school network ‘New Pedagogies for Deep Learning’ (NPDL) the next year. Compared to previous stages, schools accessed NPDL gradually, reaching by 2019 17% of primary, 38% of secondary and 37% of vocational institutions (INEEd, 2020; Red Global de Aprendizajes, 2020: 4).

Although ANEP and Ceibal are presented as jointly implementing the NPDL, school participation has consistently remained voluntary. Secondary and vocational schools have long been significantly side-lined, depending mainly on the ‘Digital Laboratories’⁶ which covered 19 out of 114 institutions by 2019 (Plan Ceibal, 2020a). Programmes to equip generations of incoming teachers were mostly focused on primary schools, relying on Ceibal’s Everybody Learns (Aprender Tod@s) and the NPDL in which a limited number of teacher students could do a traineeship in participating schools during the final year of their studies (Plan Ceibal, 2020b).

The consequences of protracting insufficient teacher training programmes on digital education were registered in 2017 by the GKO study: when asking children about who encouraged them to “explore and learn things from the internet” “all the time” or “almost all the time”, 44% responded educators, 33% parents and 27% friends (UNICEF, 2018: 92). This situation has been attributed to a great extent to Ceibal being kept separate from the MEC and the ANEP (Larrouqué, 2013). Not broadening the scope of digital education policies had greater implications on adults (carers and educators) and children from low socioeconomic groups given that educational levels and digital divides are highly interrelated (Van Dijk, 2017).

Child online protection absent from the agenda: a double-edged scenario?

Within the pillar of protection perspective, equipping carers, educators and children with a formal digital education is nonetheless significant. As the GKO network has identified, besides other factors, lower levels of digital literacy amongst adults can hinder their mediation abilities in case of children encountering risk online. Furthermore, studies from the GKO have identified that risk of harm can be more profound within vulnerable sectors. For instance, with children from these contexts often going online unsupervised through smartphones or cybercafes (Livingstone and Bulger, 2014). The latter has been connected to a higher likelihood of children being prone to online sexual related risks, especially when awareness campaigns related to this are commonly absent. This issue has been presented as highly problematic in Latin America by End Child Prostitution, Child Pornography and Trafficking of Children for Sexual Purposes (ECPAT). In a 2012 study it concluded that the expansion of ICT:

“has exposed more and more Latin American children and adolescents to online threats and vulnerabilities, including grooming for online and offline exploitation and “sexting”. ICTs are also being used increasingly (to) make the prostitution of children less visible, often most arrangements are made online or via cell phone, and for the distribution of child abuse images” (ECPAT International, 2014: iii).

ECPAT has highlighted the UN Internet Governance reports stating how Latin America has been lagging in efforts to regulate child pornography websites compared to the US and Europe (ECPAT International, 2014: 18). The global increase of child sexual exploitation online has also been recalled in the UN Human Rights Council’s (2016) reports. In Uruguay, ECPAT was especially illustrious being the only country surveyed to not follow international conventions criminalising the mere possession of child pornography and the high download rates of this content registered locally. This was further problematised by revealing that only 20% of surveyed adolescents from low-income families in Montevideo had discussed online safety issues at school (García de Diego, 2012: 10–26).

In Uruguay, references to child protection in the Digital Agenda began to be found by 2016, attuned with greater global concerns over these issues. This is observed in how, regardless of its higher proportion of children online, Uruguay implemented the GKO studies later than in neighbouring countries, such as Brazil, Argentina and Chile (Cabello et al., 2019; Global Kids Online, 2020; Ravalli and Paoloni, 2016). However, educators’ concerns over these issues had been noted earlier. Ceibal brought a new landscape in the country, with children connecting in public spaces outside school hours. In some cases, educators found themselves in complex situations, sensing they had a lack of resources for establishing limits in providing a safe environment (Rivoir and Lamschtein, 2012: 41, 154).

References to online protection since launching Ceibal are limited to the instalment of internet content filters (Plan Ceibal, 2019a). Wider issues have long been overlooked by the Digital Agenda, and public opinion has remained mostly positive regarding the image of children connecting through Ceibal, contrary to the ‘moral panic’ phenomenon that had affected this field in some countries. This was a sort of ‘double edged’ scenario, that enabled Uruguayan children to be more prone to encounter risks, yet allowed them to openly explore the internet. One example of this is the lack of parent and school surveillance which facilitated for the unhindered right to freedom of association, information access and privacy noted in other countries (Facer, 2012; Hope, 2018).

Children data protection: GDPR selections

Slightly diverse issues of digital security became more mainstream in 2016 with the Digital Agenda 2020 from the new government term (AGESIC, 2019: 18). This materialised into awareness raising campaigns amongst adults over concerns of financial scams as the government began to strongly promote the digitalisation of commercial transactions (AGESIC, 2016). The Agenda did not include special references to children, yet AGESIC lightly promoted amongst primary schools specific aspects of online safety such as strong passwords and privacy settings on social media (URCDP, 2020).

Globally, issues of online protection were increasingly connected to the right of privacy and security which also influenced Uruguay’s Digital Agenda (Greenleaf and Cottier, 2018). This can be observed through the updating in 2019 of the country’s 2008 law on Personal Data Protection and Action on Habeas Data (Law No. 18.331). As explained by a representative of AGESIC, this was done to align Uruguay with the EU’s GDPR that was implemented in 2018. Among other issues, Uruguay’s new legislation underlined the responsibility of public and private institutions to supervise, advise and act in order to safeguard personal data (URCDP, 2019).

The local EU-influenced legislation states that institutions ‘who process sensitive data as their main business and those who process large volumes of data must appoint a data protection officer’. In this respect, Uruguay narrowed its legislation to encompass cases of handling data of over 35,000 individuals and where the profit was mainly related to information about race, ethnicity, political preferences, religion, union affiliation, health and sexual life. References to children were only included when indicating that institutions handling their data should assess the impacts of the data collected, thus remaining broadly age blind (URCDP, 2019).

This comes as a surprise given the significant online population that Ceibal had enabled. Moreover, because in the case of the GDPR, extensive discussions were triggered with regards to children, which rendered special considerations for those under 16 years-old (Jasmontaite and De Hert, 2014). Finally, this was not expected in the light of the findings by scholars of children’s rights online, pointing to increasingly common cases of misuses and abuses of minors’ data for the purposes of commercialisation and surveillance implemented by public and private organisations and their subsequent negative implications on children’s privacy and lifelong development (Hope, 2018; Livingstone and O’Neill, 2014; Zuboff, 2019).

References to children’s data protection can be traced back to 2013, predominantly relying on children’s responsibility. For example, specific activities were articulated between AGESIC, ANEP and Ceibal with a national campaign ‘Your data counts. Take care of it’ (URCDP, 2020). However, in 2015, controversies emerged in the media when Ceibal signed an agreement with Google for its services ‘Apps for Education’. These were connected to the tech giant’s complicity with unlawful citizen surveillance by the United States government showcased through the 2013 ‘Snowden revelations’ (El País, 2015; Saeta TV Canal 10, 2015).

That same year, Google was in the midst of yet another controversy triggered by accusations from the online rights advocacy organisation Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). In this case it concerned Google’s non-compliance to the Children’s Online Privacy Act (COPPA)⁷ where its Apps for Education had recurred in misconduct. The tech giant had breached COPPA for a second consecutive year ‘recording students’ browsing behaviour on every single Google-operated site students visited regardless of its relation to schoolwork (that is, both in and out of the Google Apps for Education suite)’ (EFF, 2015: 7).

To develop locally a similar service as of Google Apps was disregarded by the MEC, signalling the need for improving teachers’ salaries and school services (El País, 2015; Saeta TV Canal 10, 2015). This illustrates the extent to which the swift push in policies for digital development did not consider the timely global discussions about privacy and online data protection. Google’s agreement prevailed, changing through Ceibal indicating that there was no obligation to sign up for the services, explaining ‘cookies’, the tracking of personal information and the programme being responsible for the data collected which international transfer was aligned to the URCDP (Plan Ceibal, 2019b). Google’s Terms of Service and other privacy policy documents were also shared on Ceibal’s website, of which most documents are in English (Plan Ceibal, 2019c).

A novel digital citizenship: a traditional emphasis on children’s responsibility

A greater interest in children’s online safety is observable since 2017 and is reflected in the country participating in the first GKO survey after joining the efforts of multiple institutions⁸ (UNICEF, 2018). Concerns over wider issues implicated in safeguarding children online can be observed in Fundación Ceibal dedicating the first edition of its ‘+Aprendizajes’ online publication to ‘digital citizenship and XXI century skills’ (Fundación Ceibal, 2018) and launching with AGESIC a series of ‘digital citizenship’ annual conferences (AGESIC, 2018).

This greater attention is not linked to a government initiative; it is embedded in a growing global interest on digital citizenship. Although the concept has had different understandings, it has predominantly referred to adult’s concerns over children’s misuse of digital technologies (ISTE, 2019; Ribble et al., 2004). The global trending of ‘digital citizenship’ triggered concept analyses (Choi, 2016) and reviews of its mainstream solutions. For example, pointing at its neutral representations of ICT and shifting the focus from the children’s responsibility towards the responsibility of industries and governments (Emejulu and McGregor, 2019; Noula, 2018).

The link between Uruguay’s recent attention to child protection online and the global trending of digital citizenship can be observed through its unclear outlook in this field. For example, Ceibal ‘+Aprendizajes’ cited literature from dominant approaches that focus on children’s responsibilities (Fundación Ceibal, 2018: 12) contradicting the Ceibal and AGESIC website for the first digital citizenship conference. In this, quotes were highlighted from one of its speakers presenting digital citizenship as three dimensional: “political (belonging), legal (rights and responsibilities) and social (practices)” for which “new educational programs and legal frameworks are needed” and signposting education as a key factor for countries from the ‘Global South’ (AGESIC, 2018).

This ambiguous position was presented to the researcher of this study by AGESIC representatives in early 2019. To fulfil their request, literature and research advances were shared mainly related to the Council of Europe’s Digital Citizenship Education project (Council of Europe, 2020; Magnone, 2019). This collaboration resulted in the AGESIC establishing the coordination of a digital citizenship group. The group designed a strategy mostly based on specific communication campaigns, without building on the evidence from the GKO results. Furthermore, traditional approaches were protracted with responsibilities of various stakeholders absent from discussions. This is especially noteworthy in the case of government institutions with burgeoning debates over negative consequences of welfare digitalisation on human rights (UN OHCHR, 2019).

Children’s participation constrained to statistically representative

In terms of the CRC’s pillar of participation, this has remained broadly unattended in the case of Uruguay. A recent study from the local Committee for the Rights of the Child (CDNU) revealed a critical situation in relation to adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17. Despite widely recognising the relevance of knowing their rights, 6 out of every 10 surveyed adolescents declared not doing so. This gap can severely affect the CRC’s comprehensiveness, a necessary condition for children to advocate for their protection. Moreover, the study underscored that when asking children where they felt that they could express their opinions, 6 out of every 10 felt they could do so at home, 5 with friends, and dropping to 4 within their school (Save the Children – CDNU, 2018).

The latter represents a local general pattern of not considering children’s views within different spaces that has permeated into the policymaking process. Although having the highest rate of underaged population online in the region and interest in digital citizenship solutions, child engagement in government digital strategies that affect them is quasi-absent and merely relies on quantitative survey responses. As the first GKO in 2017 suggested:

“With the exception of international comparative projects such as GKO, few studies collect representative country level information on the situation of children in the digital world, let alone attempt to know and understand their practices” (UNICEF, 2018: 41).

Contrary to this, questions about child online protection strategies were included in statistically representative household surveys from the AGESIC in 2013 (INE – AGESIC, 2013). Moreover, Ceibal has a long record of studies using closed and quantitative surveys analysing children and parents’ online experiences (Plan Ceibal, 2019d). After the GKO, the government continued to invest in regular international studies to observe children’s online engagement relying on closed questionnaires (Fundación Ceibal, 2020; Plan Ceibal, 2019e).

With an increasing interest of the government in surveying children’s online experiences and risks, questions can be raised in terms of the extent to which these findings are incorporated into shaping the policy agenda. For example, no references to the GKO or previous studies in regards to children can be found (AGESIC, 2019). Furthermore, the limitations of narrowing children’s voices merely through statistically representative surveys have become evident, because of the scope of the sample (excluding younger children) and rising questions over how solely using these can fully depict children’s online experiences.

Few initiatives in which children can openly discuss their opinions and experiences have been encountered, such as the GKO’s ‘RErights’ workshops with children between 10 and 17 years old from Montevideo (UNICEF, 2018: 31). In regard to internet governance discussions, a UN-supported annual multi-stakeholder conference dedicated to youth on this topic, the Youth IGF (2020), has been conducted in Uruguay since 2016. Amongst its board of directors Fundación Ceibal is included, however no information is registered about the strategies for engaging with children besides this one-off instance. The scope and diversity of the underaged population that participated was also not recorded (Youth IGF Uruguay, 2020).

The scarce spaces for children’s participation and the lack of engagement in the Digital Agenda with the surveys about their online experiences can have significantly adverse implications in the full promotion of the CRC. It is critical to include and sustain children’s active collaboration in policies that affect them so that these are tailored to their standpoints, in their best interest and can positively impact their lifelong development. In relation to this, integral approaches are fundamental, covering technological developments, legislations and education oriented to double balance enabling children’s protection and participation. Formally incorporating the latter is a necessary condition for children to actively participate in the internet, digital and data policy governance (Emejulu and McGregor, 2019; Third et al., 2014).

Conclusions

This research has presented a first rights-based analysis of Uruguay’s digital policy agenda in regards to children following recommendations of scholars from the fields of children online safety and rights (Livingstone and Bulger, 2014; Livingstone and Third, 2017). Guided by the CRC pillars of provision, protection and participation, specific yet key constituents of the Uruguayan government’s Digital Agenda were analysed in regards to children implemented between 2009 and 2019. This included actions encompassing education, communication campaigns, research and legislations targeting children’s digital access, digital education, digital protection and participation in the policy governance.

Uruguay’s Digital Agenda achievements have been mostly connected to the bridging of ‘digital divides’ of access between low and high income households. This was mainly due to Ceibal providing students and teachers from public schools and high-schools with laptops, localised digital education resources and connecting schools to the internet. However, the progression in Ceibal’s stages, and separation from the MEC and ANEP, showcase how its attention on the ‘digital divides’ did not sufficiently turn from digital access to education (Larrouqué, 2013; Plan Ceibal, 2017). This scenario has affected children’s right to education and therefore curtailed the CRC principles of protection and participation online, a phenomenon especially bounded to their socioeconomic backgrounds (UNICEF, 2018).

Digital education policies are key to children’s protection online by promoting their awareness on various risks, bypassing abilities and for equipping adults, particularly family members and educators, to mediate when threats emerge (Livingstone and Bulger, 2014). Issues of children’s online protection were not featured in Uruguay’s Digital Agenda until recent years, having an unclear standing and triggered by global trends in digital citizenship (AGESIC, 2019, 2020; Fundación Ceibal, 2018; Noula, 2018). This could have enabled a ‘double edged’ scenario, by avoiding strategies commonly fuelled by ‘moral panics’ restricting children’s right to privacy and freedom (Facer, 2012; Hope, 2013). However, it is relevant to note that this context might have also amplyfied online risks, such as ones sexually related, which can have impacted more acutelly children within vulnerable brackets (ECPAT International, 2014; García de Diego, 2012).

Uruguay’s scope on issues of online protection was broadened after recent updates of its data protection legislation. This was aligned with the EU’s GDPR, yet the local adaptation excluded the special considerations in regards to children (URCDP, 2019; Van der Hof et al., 2014). The EU’s regulation has been of international influence (Greenleaf and Cottier, 2018) with growing concerns pinpointing towards cases of data misuses and abuses on behalf of schools, governments and tech companies affecting children (Livingstone and Third, 2017; UN OHCHR, 2019; Zuboff, 2019). Overlooking these issues could be particularly impactful in Uruguay given its wide underaged population online, the insufficient digital education policies and rapid digitalisation of society by the Digital Agenda.

Finally, efforts to promote children’s right to participation have remained widely overlooked from the Digital Agenda through applying traditional ‘digital citizenship’ approaches (AGESIC, 2020; Fundación Ceibal, 2018). These standings were criticised for its often adult-centred misrepresentations of children’s online experiences and stark reliance on their abilities and responsibility (Livingstone and O’Neill, 2014). In the Uruguayan digital policies, children’s voices have been constrained to closed and statistically representative surveys (Fundación Ceibal, 2020; Plan Ceibal, 2019e; UNICEF, 2018) with no further evidence of these shaping the Digital Agenda (AGESIC, 2019, 2020; Plan Ceibal, 2017). Promoting more meaningful and sustained spaces to engage children in the digital policy process is critical for the effectiveness of the Digital Agenda. In order to do so, formally implementing digital education policies is intrinsic for the best interest of children and the full development of Uruguay’s equitable digital future (Third et al., 2019).

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my fellow GLOED colleagues, Elizabeth Ascroft and Phoebe Kirkup, and my friends Emily Carpenter and Liam Gladden for their proofreading, feedback and encouragement along this process; and Cecilia Rossel for her constant support in my academic endeavours. Finally, to my interviewees for their significant contributions and time to share their experience on this topic. This study could not have been possible without any of their wonderful collaborations.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Soledad Magnone

Notes

Author biography

Soledad Magnone (she/her) is a Uruguayan sociologist with 10 years of experience focused in the intersections between digital technologies, education and human rights. She holds an M.A. in Education Policies for Global Development (Erasmus+ Universities Autonomous of Barcelona, Malta and Oslo) and an MSc in Science and Technology in Society from the University of Edinburgh. Through her career she has collaborated with academic, government, private and civil society organisations in Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean. She currently directs JAAKLAC iniciativa to promote a broader participation, especially amongst youth and minority groups, in the creation of a fairer digital future. To this end, JAAKLAC openly designs and researches the possibilities of rights-based digital education practices.

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