Ministers back campaign to give under-18s right to delete social media posts

Government ministers have backed a campaign calling for under-18s to have the right to delete embarrassing and damaging material they have posted on social media that could later harm their job or education prospects.

The iRights coalition has set out five rights that young people should expect online, including the ability to easily edit or delete comments or pictures they have posted on sites such as Facebook and Twitter, and to know who is holding or profiting from their information.

The group’s proposals come amid growing concern over the fact that the internet permanently records a person’s past mistakes, which can damage anything from job prospects to university offers.

A report published by iRights on Tuesday said: “Personal experimentation is an essential part of childhood development, yet the internet never forgets and never corrects. It can possess an infinite memory of each individual and all of their online actions.

“Errors of judgment, unhappy experiences and attitudes that were the product of immaturity are saved on the internet long after they have faded from the memory of friends and family … It is essential that there is an easily accessible route for children and young people to resolve disputes or correct misinformation that does not require recourse to the courts.”

The film director and crossbench peer Beeban Kidron is leading plans to adopt proposals encouraging websites to feature “delete buttons” and to introduce expiry dates for data acquired from under-18s.

Her research, supported by the law firm Schillings, found that the UK has existing legislation that could, if implemented, do much more to support children online.

“We have absolutely failed kids by not understanding that the digital world was as much a reality as any other experience they had,” Lady Kidron told the Guardian.

“The internet is 25 years old; it was not designed with children and young people in mind. Childhood is a period of immense change, and to have an uncontextualised digital footprint is disturbing.

“This campaign is about the ability and the desire to curate your present self. You may have been a punk rocker and now you’re a new romantic. Or you may have said some really stupid things about something political. You should have the right to be who you are in the present tense online just as you are in real life.”

Other rights proposed in the report include protection from illegal or distressing pages; to be literate; and be able to make informed and conscious choices.

“It is not a freedom of speech issue,” said Kilton, “because we’re not saying that other people can’t say what they like about you; we’re not saying that you can take down what other people post. But it must be easy, accessible and possible for a child to meaningfully take down what they themselves have put up.”

Anne Longfield, the children’s commissioner for England, is launching a taskforce, Growing Up Digital, dedicated to improving the online lives of young people by adopting the proposals.

The campaign’s other backers include Joanna Shields, the minister of internet safety and security and former managing director of Google in Europe, the Scottish first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, academics from Oxford University and the London School of Economics, prominent business figures, search engine Mozilla, Microsoft, Sky, Barclays, and charities including Children in Need and Unicef.

Sturgeon, who recently launched a commission in order for the plans to be adopted in Scotland, said in a statement: “We believe that every child and young person has the right to grow up in a safe environment – that principle applies to the virtual world too. That is why we’re proud to support the iRights coalition and to ensure the Scottish government is doing its bit to keep children and young people safe online.”

The iRights campaign follows a series of incidents where high-profile young people came under scrutiny for messages they published in their school days. Seventeen-year-old Paris Brown, who was appointed as the UK’s first youth police and crime commissioner, resigned within a week due to messages she posted at the age of 14 about her sex life, drug-taking and drinking.

Mhairi Black, the youngest MP in the House of Commons for centuries, was mocked for tweets she posted as a child, including one which read: “Maths is shite” and another that said: “Woke up beside half a can of Tennents and a full pizza and more money than I came out with. I call that a success!”

Though the European Union is preparing to introduce a regulation enabling adults to demand that any images and text they posted online when they were under-18 is removed, there are currently no plans to introduce any new law in the UK.