Protecting Youth from Themselves in the Media: The Right to Be Forgotten

Abstract

Advances in telecommunications have brought many changes to our daily lives, one of which is the change in the norm of privacy. With the convenience in viewing and (re)distributing contents, on top of the permanency of contents on the Internet, privacy has become more of a concern than ever. The concern is even greater for the younger generation, because they are eager to share and less sensitive to privacy. The European Union recently has recognized that people have the right to control their own information, even after they have become publicly available. The European Union commission proposed an update in the fundamental data protection regulations, including the so-called “right to be forgotten.” However, securing the right to be forgotten is not possible with a regulation set only for one region. In the United States, where the majority of companies handling online information are based, this type of right is readily rejected because it is considered to directly violate the First Amendment’s freedom of expression. This chapter considers how to balance the freedom to express and adolescents’ right to be “forgotten.”