Vodafone and Save the Children call for stronger action to protect children online

Vodafone, the Vodafone Foundation and Save the Children today urged European policymakers to adopt more robust, harmonised measures to safeguard children in the digital world.

Despite recent progress, children across Europe remain exposed to harmful content, addictive platform features and inconsistent protections due to fragmented national regulations and evolving digital risks.

Joakim Reiter, Vodafone Group’s Chief External & Corporate Affairs Officer said: “Children have a right to participate fully in the digital world, but they also deserve a safer, more empowering online environment as risks evolve. That’s why we have today set out five robust, proportionate measures for Europe’s policymakers to help ensure better protection of minors on the internet.”

Moazzam Malik, CEO of Save the Children UK said: “Children have the right to participate fully and safely in the digital world. We welcome this joint call for action across Europe, to protect children from online harms, while empowering them with the skills and confidence they need. Together we can ensure that digital environments are designed with children’s best interests at heart. No child should be left behind as technology evolves.”

Jeffrey Demarco, Senior Technical Advisor for Protecting Children from Digital Harm at Save the Children UK added: “As a child rights organisation, we welcome decisive, Europe-wide action that protects children without excluding them. This means proportionate, privacy preserving age assurance, a ban on addictive features for under-18s and real transparency and accountability from platforms. This should be done alongside investment in digital skills for children, parents and teachers. Protection through empowerment is a standard children deserve.”

In their new policy white paper - Protection through Empowerment: Online Protection of Minors – the three organisations argue that policymakers must urgently co-ordinate five actions across Europe to ensure all young people can benefit safely from digital connectivity:

1. Mandatory Age Verification: There is an overwhelming body of evidence on the impact of children accessing online content which is either harmful or age inappropriate. All digital platforms should complete risk assessments and implement robust, privacy-preserving age assurance measures.

Action: High-risk platforms must deploy third party age assurance methods and must not use age estimation and self-declaration methods. Age assurance must happen before content is visible and must be equally effective across all devices.

2. Restrict Addictive Design Features: Addictive platform design features such as autoplay, constant scroll and algorithmic recommender systems are driving excessive screen time, dissemination of harmful material, radicalisation and extremism.

Action: There should be an outright ban on children’s exposure to addictive design features, and they should always be turned off for children by default.

3. Accountability by Design: Platforms often lack basic incentives to take full accountability for their societal impact. All platforms, not just the largest, should build in accountability and transparency by design.

Action: Accountability by design should be mandatory for all social media and content sharing platforms, including child-specific risk assessments of algorithm design and mandated safety settings in recommender systems for users under 18.

4. Effective CSAM Blocking: Vodafone undertakes to block child sexual abuse material (CSAM) wherever possible. But this is constrained by legal uncertainty under the ePrivacy Directive and GDPR, European net neutrality obligations and a lack of a harmonized EU legal basis for mandatory or permitted CSAM blocking.

Action: Europe should adopt a targeted and proportionate version of the proposed CSA Regulation with explicit provisions allowing telcos to block access to CSAM using trusted URL lists.

5. Digital Skills for All: Children, parents, and educators must be equipped with the knowledge, skills, and confidence to navigate digital environments. But digital literacy levels are uneven across Europe, with significant disparities by age, region, and socioeconomic background.

Action: System-wide approaches are needed to embed digital wellbeing and online safety into education, with strengthened teacher and parent training, and inclusive, age-appropriate digital literacy programmes exemplified by Vodafone Foundation’s Skills Upload Jr.

Protection Through Empowerment draws on evidence from leading experts, recent research, and best practice across the UK, France, and Europe, aligning with the Digital Services Act (DSA), GDPR, and the European Strategy for a Better Internet for Kids (BIK+).

Vodafone offers a comprehensive suite of tools, resources, and programmes to help keep children safe online and empower parents including parental controls and safety tools that enable parents to manage and monitor their children’s digital activity, restrict access to inappropriate content, and set usage limits across devices.

Vodafone also partners with leading child safety organisations, including the Internet Watch Foundation, the GSMA Mobile Alliance to combat digital child sexual exploitation and block access to known illegal content, and the Global Child Forum Listen Up! where children share their online experiences.

Vodafone Foundation Skills Upload Jr

Vodafone Foundation’s award-winning Skills Upload Jr programme runs in eight countries across Europe. It provides digital skills training and teaching materials to students and teachers, aiming to transform how technology is used and taught in schools.

Skills Upload Jr has now reached 10m students and teachers, more than 3,000 schools, created over 200 tech hubs and generated 64.8m views of educational social media content.

Protection through Empowerment: Online Protection of Minors is available here: