Children are often regarded as not having the competence for agency or decision-making. However, this does not mean that their best interests should not be respected, nor that their voices should be excluded from the process of innovations.
In today’s technology designs, children are often protected or restricted, instead of being nurtured or equipped with the agency to recognise manipulations, misinformation, or behavior engineering. This approach risks dehumanising children and undermining their rights. Placing children, and all children, at the center of ethical principles is foundational and critical.
Currently OxfordCCAI focuses on 1) defining agency for children in the digital context; 2) identifying children’s sense of agency; and 3) investigating how to design and support children’s agency development in the digital context.
These would not only transform the current perception of how children should be supported in their interactions with digital technologies but also provide the potential to empower their autonomy development and long-term digital well-being.
Over the last few years, we have not only produced encouraging research findings in pursuing this long-term vision but also learned invaluable lessons regarding how to engage children in effective design processes and produced the first release of our data autonomy-fostering app, CHAITok.
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