World Children's Day 2024Together for children's rights

Today is World Children's Day! Under this year's motto "Into the future with children's rights!", the German Children's Fund and UNICEF Germany are calling on society as a whole to focus more consistently on children's rights. Among other things, children have the right to safe, digital participation. To mark the occasion, we show what makes a good online offering for children.

Children who want to know about their rights are welcome on the join in on World Children's Day at kindersache.de is the right place for them. There they can find out all about their rights. There are also various suggestions for them to get active themselves. They can take a quiz to find out who they could be in the future or write a letter to their future ME. Photography, writing, composing: The creative techniques are varied.

The children's website kindersache.de is an interactive site for children between the ages of 8 and 13. Every article, every video and every animated film is reviewed by the editorial team before it is published - including every comment. kindersache.de thus offers children a protected space to try out their creativity on the Internet .

This makes the website a good example of a positive online offering for children. After all, high demands are rightly placed on online content that is suitable for children.

What is positive content for children?

But what actually makes a good online offer for children? The European Insafe Network has published criteria for this. According to these criteria, good online content is for children:

  1. Empowering: Positive offerings ensure that children have confidence and can develop their skills as independently as possible in a safe digital environment.
  2. Inspiring: Positive offerings motivate and inspire children.
  3. Stimulating: Positive offerings arouse children's curiosity and encourage them to learn.
  4. Safe: Positive offerings open up spaces for children to explore the digital world with as little risk as possible.

Insafe's checklist "Criteria for positive online services for children" also describes what children's services should take into account from a conceptual, content and technical point of view so that children can have positive experiences online. This checklist is part of the Positive Online Content Campaign (POCC) organized by Insafe every year in September.

Research project on child-friendly online services

How well are online services currently tailored to the needs of young people? To what extent are they geared towards children's rights to protection, empowerment and participation? On behalf of the BzKJ, the Digital Opportunities Foundation conducted a research project on child-friendly services and access to the Internet. As part of the study, the status quo of the field of action was recorded, needs analyzed and design options described. You can download the full report on the study here.

The Digital Opportunities Foundation also presents key features of the service landscape, such as usability via mobile devices or the realization of children's rights to protection, empowerment and participation, in an interactive map.

And where can I find good offers for children?