아동·청소년의 온라인 개인정보보호 강화를 위한 소고

Today’s digital environment has developed rapidly with the spread of smart phones, and with the increase in the use of personalized devices by children and teens, parental involvement in their online activities has decreased. In particular, as non-face-to-face activities increased after the outbreak of COVID-19, their online activities increased rapidly, and as spending their own time online has raised, the risk of their personal information exposure also increased. As the Internet greatly influences the lives of children and teens, creating a safe online environment is a prerequisite for the healthy development of children and teens into members of future digital societies. At the same time, for children and teens to grow into the leaders of the future information and communication society, they must be equipped with the ability to make correct judgments about protecting and utilizing their information as subjects of personal information. As children and teens are the digital native generation, they are proficient in using the Internet but are still in the process of development, so their cognitive capabilities as well as the personal information domain are not as complete as adults. Accordingly, it is relatively difficult to fully recognize the risk of consequences of using the Internet and providing personal information, and the ability to exercise their rights is also insufficient. All major foreign countries, including the US, EU, and UK, as well as Korea, have chosen as a major means of protection for legal representatives to exercise their rights as information subjects on behalf of children and teens, who are vulnerable consumers. However, several problems have been pointed out regarding the effectiveness of the legal representative consent system. For example, since most of the activities are conducted online, there is no way to confirm whether the legal representative actually consented in a non-face-to-face situation. It is necessary to improve the current legal representative consent system in line with the trend of the times, such as barriers that restrict access to use. In this regard, this study compared and examined the legal systems of major foreign countries in order to find ways to improve the system to strengthen the online personal information protection of children and teens in Korea. In particular, this study tried to identify the problems of the age range setting of children and teens who need domestic protection measures and the consent system of legal representatives, and tried to find out the implications. Implications for the age range requiring protective measures derived from this study are as follows. First of all, teens between the ages of 14 and 18 also need to be protected as they are imperfect beings compared to adults, so it is necessary to consider ways to expand the age range for personal information protection. Secondly, since the developmental characteristics of children and teens are different, it is necessary to prepare differentiated personal information protection policies for each age group. Thirdly, to carry out differentiated policies by age group, uniformity of age classification standards is required. The improvement direction of the current legal representative consent system derived from this study is as follows. First, it is necessary to make efforts to urge changes in the legal representative’s consent system practice behavior targeting both parents and children/teens. Secondly, technical efforts must be accompanied to confirm whether the legal representative consents to children under the age of 14. Thirdly, it is necessary to prepare a legal representative agency system for children and teens who are in special circumstances such as the absence of a legal representative. Fourthly, in-depth social discussions are needed on the direction of limiting the authority of legal representatives in cases where the child’s best interests are violated.