The Role of Children's Rights in Regulating Digital Advertising

An important domain in which children's rights are reconfigured by internet use, is digital advertising. New advertising formats such as advergames, personalised and integrated advertising have permeated the online environments in which children play, communicate and search for information. The often immersive, interactive and increasingly personalised nature of these advertising formats makes it difficult for children to recognise and make informed and well-balanced commercial decisions. This raises particular issues from a children's rights perspective, including, inter alia, their rights to development (Article 6, UNCRC), privacy (Article 16, UNCRC), protection against economic exploitation (Article 32, UNCRC), freedom of thought (Article 17, UNCRC) and education (Article 28, UNCRC). The paper addresses this reconfiguration by translating the general principles and the provisions of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child into the specific context of digital advertising. Moreover, it considers the different dimensions of the rights (i.e. protection, participation and provision) and how the commercialisation affects children and how their rights are exercised.