Research, advocacy, and action for children's digital safety
Big tech has too much power over children's digital lives — and too much influence over the people trying to fix it. CLARA Standards exists to uncover what's actually happening, advocate for the right laws, and give kids the skills to navigate the digital world safely.
The Problem
Everyone can see something is wrong. Kids are becoming passive consumers of technology designed to hold their attention at any cost. Parents watch it happen and feel powerless — handed spy tools and policing software instead of real support. Some children are genuinely harmed.
Meanwhile, the companies building these products have enormous influence over who gets to study the problems, who gets funded to solve them, and what laws get written. They shape the child safety organizations that depend on their money. They design safeguards that look good on paper but don't work in practice. They make products addictive and resist making them child-safe.
Platforms ship age gates and parental controls that exist on paper. In reality, up to 60% of children under 13 are on age-restricted platforms — most with their parents' knowledge. In-app parental controls sit below 20% activation. These aren't safety features. They're checkboxes.
Instead of building products that are safe by design, companies put the burden on parents — most of whom don't use these tools the way kids do and aren't equipped to monitor technology that changes faster than they can learn it. Parenting shouldn't require a surveillance operation.
Many child safety organizations depend on funding from the companies they evaluate. That doesn't make them corrupt — but it makes true independence rare. Even well-meaning organizations may hesitate to challenge their funders. The field needs voices with no financial stake in the outcome.
Legislators around the world are working hard on youth online safety — but they need research-backed, tech-experienced guidance to write laws that actually hold platforms accountable. Good intentions aren't enough when the other side of the table has unlimited technical and legal resources.
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