From Screen to Harm: Child Exploitation in the Digital Age

Abstract

Child exploitation was traditionally a bounded, physical problem, but the digital era has transformed it into something constant, algorithmically produced, and transnational. AI companion apps, recommendation systems, and chatbots now play a role in children’s emotional lives, with documented cases of grooming, sexualised interaction, and psychological manipulation. This is evident in wrongful death litigation in American courts, where a federal court has, for the first time, accepted that a chatting emotional AI system can plausibly owe a duty of care to minors. These harms implicate rights guaranteed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and clarified for the digital environment by General Comment No. 25, including protection from exploitation, privacy, and the best interests of the child. Yet international human rights law was built around states, not multinational companies that design, deploy, and profit from these technologies. A child harmed in one country therefore has limited means to pursue a company based in another. This paper argues that the mismatch between where harm occurs, where corporate power sits, and where remedies can be found is a problem of global justice, not merely technology regulation. It leaves children in weaker states less protected despite holding identical rights on paper. Drawing on the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, emerging guidance on child rights impact assessments, and comparative regulation, this paper asks which parts of this gap existing soft-law tools can close and which require new international instruments.