A Digital Declaration of Rights
A quick PSA -- young people are taking back their power
In an increasingly manipulative online world, we’ve been asking for data privacy and clarity around how our rights extend from the physical to the online world.
But we’ve got -NOTHING- except empty promises from each of the Big Tech companies.
So, we asked Congress for the same things. “Please, Mr. and Mrs. Congress, may I have some more Freedom please?”
Their answer?
“Listen kid, I’ve got a nice big serving of TikTok ban for you. Would you like some Meta A.I. chatbots with that? Thoughts and prayersssssss.”
What do we even do in that situation? Do we sit and wait? Or do we act? And while all of us are even ASKING that question, instead of waiting around, a youth-led organization called Design It For Us traveled to colleges across the country to talk with students and experts about responsible technology use.
Design It For Us has 200 members across more than 30 states and 13 countries between the ages of 14 and 26, with its core leadership being 18 at the youngest.
“We the young people who have been addicted, manipulated, and taken advantage of by Big Tech, produce this Declaration of Digital Rights,” writes Design It For Us on their website. “We are a generation that has grown up almost entirely online. In middle school, many of us received our first smartphones and got on social media. Snapchat and Instagram were the apps of choice that allowed us to communicate outside of school, form community, and connect with people we might not otherwise have ever met. Yet despite the benefits, the darker sides of social media and Big Tech’s addictive features hooked us from a young age and kept us scrolling. Ask most young people and it’s likely we’ll have something to say about our negative experiences with social media. The prevalence of addiction, scams, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, sextortion, and suicide heightened and maintained by Big Tech’s addictive algorithms is a major threat to our futures. Big Tech has made it impossible for us to thrive on and offline. Enough is enough.”
Tiktok failed to load.Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browser
Design It For Us has thrown events all over the place, and has hosted interactive panel events with Nobel Laureates, whistleblowers, the FTC Director, and more. But at each event, which is packed with concerned young people, they polled students about their social media experiences. After tallying the results, they created a collective Declaration of Digital Rights, a proclamation outlining their shared ideas for a fairer and more accountable online world that works for ALL OF US.
But what even is the Declaration of Digital Rights? As Design It For Us puts it, “the following principles represent the ideals of our generation.” Their declaration demands the right to privacy - the complete need for tech companies to protect personal data. “Privacy must come before profit.” This is followed by the right to safety - both physically AND mentally, and then the right to not be experimented on, which brings up Big Tech experimenting with new features online without informed consent.
Later in the declaration, demands for agency (the right to control your own digital life), user controls, deletion, choice of platform and product, and more are made, but I think they save the most important point for last: the right to be protected from manipulation
“Like never before, Big Tech has relentlessly leveraged innovation against the best interests of users, manipulating our data and weaponizing our well being against us. Instead of crafting design features meant to support healthy engagement, Big Tech companies have wielded their unchecked power to addict us and harm us while publicly saying otherwise. We have a right to be shielded from these insidious patterns of abuse.”
This is what it’s all about, folks. Depending on what era you grew up in and what your music taste is, you may have heard the kids aren’t alright, if you listen to The Offspring. Or maybe the kids are alt-right, if Bad Religion is more your speed. Truthfully, I think The Who had it right the first time - and the kids ARE alright.
The Declaration of Digital Rights represents a youth-led demand for social media companies and policymakers to prioritize the safety, wellbeing, and values of young people by addressing the harmful effects of technology and shifting decision-making power to include youth voices. It includes rights to privacy, rights to safety, and the rights to not be experimented on. It also provides us with a right to agency, as well as tools, so we can actually control our social media experiences!
You can check it out at this link to read the full declaration and poll. Now let me know: What do you want added to the declaration? What would you push your members of Congress to do with all the work we did for them by actually hearing from young people… because they wouldn’t even know where to start to do such a thing?
Let’s work toward a better online experience with more privacy - and clarity of rights for EVERYONE.
It reminds me of Big Tobacco, how we raised the buying age and now we have warning labels on everything but cigarettes are still sold everywhere and more addictive than ever.
This is a great idea. Just sent to my 3 grandchildren!!