Digital Child Labour, the Latent Form of Exploitation?

Abstract

This article examined digital child labour as a less visible form of child exploitation emerging from the expansion of online platforms and technology-mediated work. It considered how children’s participation in content creation, informal digital tasks, online commercial activity and other platform-based practices could blur the boundary between learning, recreation and labour. The analysis showed that digital work could provide skills and early practical exposure, but could also place children in unregulated environments marked by privacy risks, cyberbullying, grooming, sexual exploitation, academic disruption and the monetisation of their data, time and images. The article further assessed how international labour standards, Indian child-protection laws and selected European regulatory developments addressed these risks. It found that existing legal frameworks offered important protections but were not fully adapted to the distinctive features of digital labour, including weak employer-employee relationships, transnational reach and concealed forms of remuneration. The article concluded that stronger legal safeguards, platform accountability, coordinated enforcement, public awareness and improved data collection were required to protect children without excluding them from beneficial digital participation.