As the digital landscape constantly evolves, our efforts to safeguard and empower young people online must also adapt, which is why we are proud to announce a €10 million contribution today.

Conducting surveys to uncover opportunities

Empowering parents to make informed decisions about their families’ online activities is at the core of our mission. A recent survey commissioned by Google, which surveyed 10,000 European parents, highlights the importance and frequency of parents discussing online safety with their children.

The survey reveals that children and teenagers are actively using educational content, such as learning new languages on YouTube, and accessing educational apps to support their learning and studies at home. Additionally, parents are leveraging tools like Family Link to ensure their children have positive and age-appropriate online experiences.

Enhanced parental control features

The debate about the role of smartphones in schools and the barriers to distraction-free learning is well-known, and many of us share these concerns.

In response, we have developed School Time, a feature that will be rolled out this spring on Android phones, tablets, and watches. This tool enables parents to limit phone functionality and restrict app access during school hours while still allowing calls and texts from approved contacts.

Our latest updates to Family Link provide a simplified way for parents to manage screen time, privacy, and content filtering controls across their child’s Android and Chrome devices. Parents can also add trusted contacts directly to their child’s device and limit phone calls and text conversations to these approved contacts, ensuring children only interact with known individuals.

Collaborating to achieve age assurance

Similarly, we have been working to develop effective and safe solutions for age assurance, a challenge that requires collaboration among platforms, developers, app stores, governments, and parents.

Our approach involves providing infrastructure that connects developers with privacy-preserving age signals. For example, Android’s new Credential Manager API can minimize privacy risks related to user credentialing. This API requests explicit permission to share an age signal stored in the user’s on-device digital wallet, which can be obtained from a digital government ID or other industry-standard age signals. To increase the availability of age signals in digital wallets, we are seeking partners in the region who can issue verifiable age credentials. Any age assurance solutions must prioritize user privacy and control over personal information.

In partnership with parents, teachers, child wellbeing organizations, and policymakers, we will continue to work together to develop technologies that protect, respect, and empower kids and teens across all Google platforms.