KINGSTON, Jamaica — Jamaica’s ongoing discussion around youth digital safety has gained a new layer of input, as the Fi We Children Foundation (FWCF), a prominent local child rights advocacy organization, has pushed back against the narrative that limiting children’s access to social media alone can address growing online threats to young people. The group issued its formal response Monday after Jamaican Health Minister Dr. Christopher Tufton recently announced the government was exploring new access restrictions for minors on social media platforms.
While FWCF openly welcomed the government’s growing recognition of the urgent need to address online harm to children, the organization emphasized that incremental access limits cannot deliver the meaningful, long-term protection young Jamaicans need in an increasingly digital world. Today, children interact with digital platforms for education, social connection, and recreation from a young age, making piecemeal restrictions an incomplete solution that fails to address the root causes of online danger.
Instead, FWCF argues that robust, holistic change is required: this framework must center on updated national legislation, greater corporate accountability from global technology firms, and digital spaces intentionally built around the unique developmental needs and rights of children.
At the top of the organization’s policy agenda is urgent legislative reform, specifically targeted amendments to Jamaica’s existing Child Care and Protection Act (CCPA). FWCF stresses that existing legal protections for children have not kept pace with rapid technological innovation, and the law must be updated to explicitly codify protections against the full range of modern online harms facing minors, to guarantee children’s equal rights to safety both offline and online.
FWCF has laid out six core pillars for its proposed regulatory reform, each designed to shift the default of digital platforms from profit-driven engagement to child-centered safety. First, the group requires mandatory age-appropriate design for all major digital services, requiring platforms to prioritize children’s well-being over the business model of maximizing user engagement and addictive scrolling behavior. Second, child accounts must be set to the strongest possible privacy defaults by default, including automatic disabling of location tracking and built-in restrictions on unsolicited contact from unknown users. Third, the commercial collection and use of children’s personal data for behavioral profiling must be banned outright to stop exploitative targeting of minors. Fourth, platform algorithms must be adjusted to prioritize developmentally appropriate, educational, and creative content for children, while actively filtering out harmful material including content promoting self-harm, eating disorders, and sexually explicit content unsuitable for minors. Fifth, technology firms must be assigned a statutory legal duty of care, requiring companies to proactively identify, assess, and mitigate potential harms to children that may arise from their products and services. Finally, independent regulatory oversight must be strengthened, giving government regulators clear authority to conduct compliance audits, enforce existing rules, and deliver meaningful remediation to children when harm does occur.
The advocacy group also grounded its demands in international human rights framework, noting that the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) reaffirmed in 2026 that all fundamental children’s rights recognized under international law apply fully in digital spaces. As a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Jamaica is legally bound to uphold two core principles relevant to digital safety: Article 3 requires the state to prioritize the best interests of the child in all policy decisions, while Article 5 mandates respect for children’s evolving capacities as they grow and develop.
“The digital world should be designed with children in mind,” the FWCF statement said. “Children have the right not only to protection from harm but also to participation, information, privacy, and development in online spaces.”
The organization closed by urging the Jamaican government to pursue evidence-based policy making that balances the urgent need for child protection with the full spectrum of children’s digital rights. Any new restrictions on child social media access, FWCF emphasized, must be paired with sweeping legal reform and stricter legal obligations for technology companies operating in Jamaica.
“Every child deserves a safer internet — one built for children, not merely one that excludes them,” FWCF said.
