[Commlist] Conference CFP: Digital and Sexual Citizenship in an Age of Social Media Bans: Interrogating the Rights of Children and Young People

SAVE THE DATE: 6-8 July 2026
*Conference call for papers and panel proposals*
**
*Digital and Sexual Citizenship in an Age of Social Media Bans: 
Interrogating the Rights of Children and Young People*
Initiative of the ECU Ethical Digital Futures Group
Dates:
Monday 6 July (Welcome function 5.00-7.30)
Tuesday 7 July (Panels and presentations)
Wednesday 8 July (Panels and presentations)
Venue: Oaks Hotel, Murray Street, Perth (in-person only)
Early-bird registration will open soon after abstract assessment.
Registration: $200
Welcome function: $50
Outcomes: We will publish an edited collection of papers, publisher TBC
Many Western countries, including Australia, are signatories to the UN’s 
Convention on the Rights of the Child. Nonetheless, the rights of 
children and adolescents are increasingly impacted by laws, such as the 
recent social media ban, and policies prohibiting students’ use of 
mobile phones in schools. Often, children’s views on laws and policies 
that impact their rights are either not sought at all or paid scant 
attention. This is in contravention of Article 12 which grants all 
children who are capable of forming their own views the right to express 
them freely in all matters that affect them, requiring that these views 
are “given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.”
Adults’ fears around children’s digital media use are the latest in a 
long line of techno-panics. Such fears are increasingly likely to result 
in outright removal of access, as with school phone bans, and the recent 
ban on social media accounts for children under 16. Meanwhile, the suite 
of nine proposed industry codes, developed with the Digital Industry 
Group Inc (DIGI) and approved by the Office of the eSafety Commissioner 
– with three codes already in force - will impact services used by 
Australians of all ages. When fully realised these will impact search 
engines, online games, social media messaging, AI companions and 
chatbots, app stores and equipment manufacturers and suppliers.
The law continues to lag behind young people’s digital customs and 
practices. This is the case with intimate digital communication, for 
example, where consensual sexual images shared between consenting minors 
remains illegal, while consenting adults are at perfect liberty to 
‘sext’ each other. While safety is paramount, concerns about under-18s’ 
media use need to be balanced with young people’s rights as digital and 
sexual citizens.
Materials that have been available to teens in the past will 
increasingly be restricted by age checks and other gatekeeping 
mechanisms, even though content that some adults deem risky has been 
identified by many teens as providing life-affirming connections and 
community, particularly for marginalised young people. Indeed, many 
youth-focused organisations are concerned that education and support 
materials provided by, with and for young people may soon be locked 
behind age-restriction prohibitions. Proponents of these bans assert 
that children are not old enough to know better: young people would beg 
to differ.
This conference welcomes papers exploring the impact of law and policy 
on young people’s rights and lived experience, as well as papers that 
explore children’s agency and digital sexual citizenship more broadly. 
Designed to be an academic conference, promoting new knowledge and 
scholarship in this area, the conference also aims to include young 
people as participants. We will work with young people to provide 
roundtable workshops to offer feedback and perspectives at the end of 
each day. Adults accompanying a teen or younger child who wishes to take 
part will be welcomed, and young people will be allocated a fee-free place.
*Please send your 200-word abstract, or 500-word panel proposal, and 
short bios by *20 April* to: (DigitalCitizenship /at/ ecu.edu.au) 
<mailto:(DigitalCitizenship /at/ ecu.edu.au)>*
*Abstracts will be assessed by early May and proposers notified at that 
time.*


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