Designing Digital Platforms for Children's Wellbeing

We are beyond awareness. The question now is what companies are changing.

For years, questions about how digital platforms shape behaviour, particularly in children, have been discussed in research, policy circles and quietly among practitioners. What is different now is that these questions are no longer peripheral. They are being examined openly, including in courtrooms, where companies such as Meta have had to answer for them, with their most senior leaders on the witness stand.

That shift matters. But it is also difficult to ignore what has brought us here. The fact that it has taken legal action, and the lived experiences of children, to bring these design choices into full view is deeply concerning.

These cases matter not only because of the companies involved or the size of the judgments. They matter because they force us to look at something much more fundamental: the design choices companies make, what they know about their effects on children and how long they wait before changing them.

What the courts looked at in 2026

In March 2026, two US juries reached verdicts a day apart. On 24 March, a jury in Santa Fe found that Meta had violated New Mexico's consumer protection law, in a case brought by the state's Attorney General, and set civil penalties of $375 million. On 6 August, after a second phase heard by the judge alone, the court found Meta had contributed to a public nuisance and ordered a further $567 million, bringing the total to $942 million.

The judgment agreed with the state that "autoplay, infinite scroll, 'like counts,' and algorithmic recommendations combine to facilitate addictive or problematic behaviors in adolescent users". For New Mexico, it ordered Meta to stop push notifications to under-18s between 10pm and 7am and during school hours, to hide like counts by default and to cap use at 90 hours a month across Facebook and Instagram. Meta has said it will appeal.

On 25 March, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and YouTube negligent in the design or operation of their platforms, found that this was a substantial factor in harm to the young woman who brought the case, and awarded $6 million in damages. TikTok and Snap had settled before trial. It was a bellwether case for thousands of similar lawsuits. In June, the judge refused the companies' requests for a new trial, writing that there was "substantial evidence that Plaintiff was harmed by the design features of Instagram, regardless of any of the content found on that platform". Both companies say they will appeal.

We are beyond awareness

We are now beyond the point of awareness. The focus must move to action. Digital products shape behaviour. That is part of what design does. The safeguarding question is what behaviour we are designing for, particularly when the user is a child.

What strikes me in the court papers is how familiar the features are. Autoplay. Endless feeds. Notifications. Like counts. Recommender systems. None of these features is new, and every one of them is visible to anyone who opens the app.

The UK's Children's Code, which organisations have been expected to meet since September 2021, already describes "reward loops, continuous scrolling, notifications and auto-play features" as strategies used to extend engagement. So the question was never whether we knew. It was whether we chose to act.

And for a child, these are not abstract design choices.

• Autoplay can mean one more video when they intended to sleep.
• A streak can turn logging in into an obligation.
• A notification can interrupt school, homework or time with friends.
• A like count can turn social interaction into a visible measure of approval.
• A recommender system can keep serving material long after a child would otherwise have stopped looking for it.

None of these features acts in isolation. The experience is cumulative. And that is exactly why wellbeing has to be considered at the level of the whole product, not one feature at a time.

What does designing for children's wellbeing actually mean?

Designing for children's wellbeing means treating a child's health, sleep, development and safety as design requirements, not side effects. In practice, it means safe and private defaults, no features that exploit a child's attention, success measures that include healthy use and named people who are accountable when a product harms children.

It also means recognising that children are not one group. A 7-year-old, a 13-year-old and a 17-year-old do not have the same developmental needs, capacities or experiences. And children of the same age will not necessarily experience a product in the same way. Some children may face additional risks because of disability, trauma, social isolation or other circumstances.

Designing for children therefore requires more than deciding whether a product is suitable for "under-18s". It means understanding who is actually using it and how different children may experience it.

This requires a fundamental recalibration of priorities. Here is what that means in practice, and where regulation already expects it.

1. Wellbeing must become a core design principle, not a secondary consideration

A core principle is one that can stop a launch. If wellbeing only appears in a review after the feature is built, it is a secondary consideration, whatever the policy says.

In practice, this means asking about children before the roadmap is set:

• Who will use this?
• At what ages?
• What could it do to their sleep, schoolwork, friendships and sense of self?
• Could some children experience the product differently from others?
• What happens if the product creates an unintended risk?

A child rights impact assessment is one structured way to answer those questions, and our safety by design checklist is another.

The first standard of the ICO's code is that "the best interests of the child should be a primary consideration" when designing services likely to be accessed by children. Its guidance asks services to avoid features that use personal data to automatically extend use "instead of requiring children to make an active choice", and suggests pause buttons that let a child take a break without losing their progress. Deceptive design sits on the wrong side of that line.

But this is also where safeguarding and product design increasingly meet. If a design decision can affect a child's sleep, repeatedly expose them to harmful material, create pressure to remain online or shape who and what they interact with, then that decision can have safeguarding consequences. Safeguarding cannot begin only when a child reports that something has gone wrong. It has to influence the conditions the product creates in the first place.

2. Age-appropriate experiences should be the default, not an exception

A default is a decision made on behalf of every child who never opens the settings menu. If the safe version of a product exists only behind three taps, it is an exception.

The ICO's code requires settings to be "high privacy" by default and profiling to be switched off by default unless there is a compelling reason, taking account of the child's best interests. The European Commission's guidelines on the protection of minors under Article 28 of the Digital Services Act, published on 14 July 2025, go further. They recommend private accounts by default and "disabling by default features that contribute to excessive use, like communication 'streaks,' ephemeral content, 'read receipts,' autoplay, or push notifications".

Age-appropriate design also means recognising that children's needs and capacities change considerably across childhood and adolescence. The experience offered to a young child should not simply be the adult product with a few features removed. Nor should companies assume that one experience will be appropriate for every teenager.

Defaults depend partly on knowing who is a child, which is where age assurance comes in. In Australia, since 10 December 2025, age-restricted social media platforms must take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from having an account. But a ban is not the whole answer. Children who are on a platform, legitimately or not, still need it to be safe. Age assurance can help determine when age-appropriate protections should apply, but it should not become a substitute for safer design.

3. Success metrics need to move beyond engagement towards healthy, sustainable use

Teams build what they are measured on. If the dashboard rewards time spent, sessions per day and notification open rates, the product drifts towards more of each. And a recommender system optimised for engagement learns whatever keeps a child watching. A company cannot say children's wellbeing is a priority while rewarding teams only for increasing the amount of time children spend on the product.

That does not mean engagement is always harmful. A child spending longer on a learning platform, talking to friends or accessing support may be having a positive experience. The question is whether engagement is being treated as an end in itself. If wellbeing matters, it needs to appear somewhere in the measures of success.

Healthy, sustainable use can be measured too.

• How easily can a child leave?
• How much use happens late at night?
• Do sessions end at a natural stopping point?
• Are children repeatedly returning because they want to, or because the product has created pressure to do so?
• Are the reports children make acted on?
• Do safety interventions actually reduce risk?

These are product questions, not just safeguarding questions. Regulators are already looking at feeds. From 25 July 2025, services in scope of the UK's Online Safety Act have had to apply Ofcom's Protection of Children Codes, which include safer feeds. The EU guidelines ask platforms to modify recommender systems so children are less likely to get "stuck in rabbit holes". And Australia's exposure draft of a digital duty of care bill, released on 8 September 2026, treats recommender systems, endless feeds, feedback mechanisms and disappearing content as having negative behavioural impacts for under-16s.

It is a draft, but the direction is clear. Regulation is increasingly catching up with something responsible product design should already recognise: how a product is designed can affect children's wellbeing.

4. Sometimes friction should be designed in, not designed out

Product teams are often trained to remove friction. Make the next action easier. Reduce the number of clicks. Keep the experience seamless. Keep the user moving.

But when children are using a product, not all friction is bad. Some friction can be protective.

• A natural stopping point creates an opportunity to leave.
• Asking before continuing gives a child a moment to choose.
• Turning autoplay off means the next piece of content requires an active decision.
• A reminder after extended use interrupts what might otherwise become a continuous experience.
• Removing a streak can remove the pressure to return simply to avoid losing it.

This does not mean making products deliberately difficult for children to use. It means recognising that seamlessness is not always the right design objective. The question should not always be: How do we make this easier to continue? Sometimes it should be: Where would a pause help? That is a very different design question.

5. Accountability must be present at every level, from product design to leadership

Accountability cannot sit only with a trust and safety team consulted at the end. The designer choosing a default, the data scientist tuning a ranking model, the product lead setting targets and the board approving the strategy all make decisions that reach children.

Regulation increasingly reflects that responsibility. Under Ofcom's children's codes, services must have a named person accountable for children's safety. The European Commission has said it will use its Article 28 guidelines to assess compliance. Australia's draft bill would require providers to ensure, so far as reasonably practicable, "a safe online environment", alongside a Children's Online Privacy Code that must be registered by 10 December 2026. And in Los Angeles, the jury found that each company knew its platform could be dangerous when used by a minor.

But naming someone as accountable is not enough. Accountability also requires authority. If the person responsible for children's safety identifies a serious risk, can they delay a launch? Can they require a feature to be redesigned? Can they challenge a commercial target? Can they ask for more evidence before a product reaches children? And if product and safety teams disagree, who makes the final decision?

A named person without the authority to influence those decisions is not meaningful accountability. That is why senior leadership has to own the trade-offs, not just sign off at the end.

Children need a voice in the design process

There is another part of this that we should not overlook. We should be careful not to design children's wellbeing entirely from an adult perspective. Children can tell us things analytics cannot. They can tell us:

• when a feature feels difficult to leave;
• when a notification creates pressure;
• when a safety tool is embarrassing to use;
• when a reporting system makes no sense;
• when an adult's idea of a "safe" feature does not match their actual experience;
• and when something we assumed was helpful creates a completely different experience in practice.

Listening to children does not transfer responsibility to them. Children should not be expected to make unsafe products safe. Adults and companies remain responsible for the decisions they make and the products they put into children's hands.

But good design should be informed by the people who actually experience it. Children should not only be users whose behaviour we measure. They should also have meaningful opportunities, appropriate to their age and circumstances, to influence the products and protections that affect them.

Questions for product and leadership teams

If you build or run a service that children use, I would start here:

• Which of our features are designed to extend time spent? Have we tested them with children's wellbeing, not only engagement, as the outcome?
• What does a 13-year-old get by default? Would we be comfortable defending each of those defaults to the child as well as to their parent?
• Do we send notifications to children at night or during school hours? If so, why?
• Where have we deliberately created natural stopping points? Are there places where adding appropriate friction could help children make an active choice about continuing?
• What do our dashboards reward? Do any of them measure healthy and sustainable use?
• Who, by name, is accountable for children's safety? Do they have the authority to delay or stop a launch?
• What happens when commercial and wellbeing objectives conflict? Who makes that decision, and how is it documented?
• Have we considered different children? Are we designing around one imagined child, or have we considered different ages, needs, capacities and vulnerabilities?
• When did we last ask children what our product does to their day?

And perhaps most importantly: What have we actually changed because of what children told us?

What are you changing now?

We have spent years asking whether technology affects children's wellbeing. That is no longer the most useful question. The question for companies now is what they do with what they know.

Do they change the default? Do they redesign the feature? Do they change what teams are rewarded for? Do they create natural stopping points? Do they give safety leaders the authority to stop a launch? Do they listen to children? And when wellbeing and engagement point in different directions, which one wins?

Technology will continue to play a defining role in how the next generation learns, plays, connects and understands themselves and the world around them. The same questions now apply to AI chatbots and companions, where design can shape trust, behaviour and dependency in deeply human ways. That makes the choices made by designers, engineers, data scientists, product leaders and boards enormously important.

Children's wellbeing cannot be something we measure only after a product has already shaped their behaviour. It has to be part of what we design for from the beginning. The next phase is not more discussion. It is redesign.

So for every company building technology children use, the question is simple: What are you changing now?

Frequently asked questions

What did the 2026 verdicts against Meta and YouTube decide?

In March 2026, a New Mexico jury found Meta violated state consumer protection law and set civil penalties of $375 million. A day later, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in the design or operation of their platforms and awarded $6 million in damages. In August, the New Mexico court ordered a further $567 million and design changes, bringing the total in that case to $942 million.

Are these verdicts final?

No. Meta has said it will appeal in New Mexico, and Meta and Google have said they will appeal the Los Angeles verdict.

Does UK law already require wellbeing-centred design?

In part. The ICO's Children's Code requires the child's best interests to be a primary consideration, high privacy defaults and profiling to be switched off by default unless there is a compelling reason. Ofcom's Protection of Children Codes, in force since 25 July 2025, include safer feeds and accountability requirements for children's safety.

Is a social media ban for under-16s enough?

No single measure addresses every risk. Minimum age rules, such as Australia's since December 2025, are one layer. But older teenagers remain on these platforms, and age restrictions do not remove the need to design safer products for children who can access and use them. Age assurance and safer design therefore need to work together rather than being treated as alternatives.

Does designing for wellbeing mean reducing engagement?

Not necessarily. Engagement can be positive. Children use technology to learn, create, communicate, play and access support. The issue is not engagement itself. The question is whether products are designed to maximise engagement regardless of its effect on the child, or whether healthy and sustainable use is also treated as a measure of success.

Why can friction be good for children?

Some friction gives children an opportunity to make an active choice. Natural stopping points, autoplay being switched off, reminders after extended use and other pauses can interrupt continuous use. The goal is not to make technology difficult to use. It is to recognise that removing every opportunity to stop is not necessarily in a child's best interests.

Who should be accountable for children's wellbeing in a technology company?

There should be clear accountability, but responsibility cannot sit only with a trust and safety team. Designers, engineers, data scientists, product leaders and senior leadership all make decisions that can affect children. The person responsible for children's safety also needs sufficient authority to influence those decisions, including the ability to escalate serious concerns and challenge a launch when necessary.

Sources

1. State of New Mexico ex rel. Torrez v. Meta Platforms, Inc., No. D-101-CV-2023-02838: Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law, and Judgment, Order, and Decree of the Court, First Judicial District Court, Santa Fe County, New Mexico, filed 6 August 2026.
2. New Mexico court orders Meta to pay $567 million over mental health harms to kids online, Associated Press via PBS News, 6 August 2026.
3. New Mexico officials to decide how to spend $942M Meta judgment, AG Torrez says, Albuquerque Journal, 7 August 2026.
4. Jury awards $6 million in damages in landmark social media addiction trial in Los Angeles, Associated Press via ABC7 Los Angeles, 25 March 2026.
5. Google and Meta denied new trial in youth social media addiction case, CNBC, 10 June 2026.
6. Age appropriate design: a code of practice for online services, code standards, Information Commissioner's Office.
7. Age appropriate design code, standard 5: Detrimental use of data, Information Commissioner's Office.
8. What's changing for children on social media from 25 July 2025, GOV.UK, July 2025.
9. The kids are alright? Ofcom publishes final children's codes under the Online Safety Act, Bristows LLP, 2025.
10. Commission publishes guidelines on the protection of minors, European Commission, 14 July 2025.
11. Social media minimum age, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, accessed September 2026.
12. Children's Online Privacy Code, Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, accessed September 2026.
13. Safe by design: unpacking Australia's proposed digital duty of care for online services, Clayton Utz, 21 September 2026.
14. Australia's 'digital duty of care': what the draft bill means for online services, Allens, 24 September 2026.

Last reviewed October 1, 2026. Court outcomes, regulatory steps and dates checked against the sources listed. Appeals are pending; check the latest position before relying on them.