The United Nations has issued an urgent warning regarding children’s growing exposure to unregulated artificial intelligence, online harassment, and manipulative digital designs. Releasing a brief ahead of International Youth Day, officials compared emerging AI technologies to untested medicine and called on governments, tech companies, and advertisers to strengthen online protections.
United Nations Warning on Unregulated AI and Online Harms
More than eight in 10 young people aged between 15 and 24 worldwide are currently online, according to a new United Nations brief released ahead of International Youth Day. The data shows that internet use among young people in low-income countries nearly reaches double the rate of the general population in those regions.
Ahead of the release, UN Secretary-General António Guterres called for an AI Child Safety Pledge. He cautioned against exposing young users to poorly governed technologies, drawing a direct parallel to pharmaceutical products that bypass standard testing protocols. No child should be a guinea pig for unregulated AI,
Guterres stated, adding, When a child is harmed, the answer must never be ‘the algorithm did it.’
The UN brief outlines that numerous online dangers facing young people are not accidental occurrences. Instead, the report attributes these risks partly to commercial business models engineered to monetise personal data, online spending, attention, and user engagement. Among the major hazards identified are algorithms explicitly structured to encourage prolonged usage, alongside manipulative digital designs, loot boxes, and “dark patterns” that foster compulsive online behavior.
Because children and young people are in developmental stages where their identities, habits, and relationships remain formative, the UN emphasizes that they face heightened vulnerability. The reported dangers encompass AI-generated harmful content, the malicious employment of artificial intelligence to facilitate exploitation, algorithmic bias, disinformation, and online harassment. Furthermore, the brief draws attention to increasingly hidden advertising strategies aimed at youth to stimulate online spending. Taken together, the report warns, these practices normalize pervasive commercial surveillance and manipulative design during the most impressionable years of development.
Policy Recommendations and Youth Involvement
Despite detailing these pervasive risks, the UN stressed that children and young people should not be categorized solely as victims. The report recognizes youth as creators, organisers, journalists, advocates, and participants in public debate, noting that youth-led movements continually influence public conversations and civic life globally. At the same time, the UN warned that digital spaces can expose young organisers to surveillance, intimidation, and harassment.
To address these challenges, the UN urged researchers and governments to integrate young people directly into policymaking concerning information integrity. Charlotte Scaddan, UN Senior Adviser on Information Integrity, emphasized that children bring valuable contributions to solving the ongoing digital information crisis. Protecting them and including them are not competing goals. We have to do both,
Scaddan said.
The UN brief sets forth specific policy and legal measures for Member States to reinforce online child protection. It calls upon technology companies to engineer platforms featuring stronger safeguards for children. Additionally, advertisers are advised to avoid exploitative commercial practices and respect children’s rights, while news organisations are urged to better serve young audiences and actively promote reliable information.
The broader digital environment remains largely unregulated, frequently exposing children to age-inappropriate content, violent images, and hate messages that can impact their rights and well-being. While initiatives to mitigate exposure to such material are gaining momentum, researchers emphasize that additional evidence is required to guide industry practice, regulation, and policy. A recent cross-national brief authored by Daniel K. Winther, Mariya Stoilova, Moritz Büchi, Rogers Twesigye, David Smahel, and Sonia Livingstone examined children’s exposure to violent images and hate messages across 36 countries, analyzing these experiences against country-level internet access to help establish effective policy countermeasures and proactive industry solutions.
