A Review of Social Network Regulations and Mechanisms for Safeguarding Children’s Privacy

The privacy challenges of social networks and their use by children online require the assessment of legal frameworks and the implemented service provider mechanisms to identify potential gaps. This paper reviews the scientific literature on privacy mechanisms for children on social networks. First, we extensively examine existing legal regulations governing minors’ privacy on these platforms. Next, we overview the current scientific literature to assess the mechanisms implemented to safeguard the privacy of minors on social networks. Our findings suggest a lack of consistency in legal frameworks for defining child privacy mechanisms. Similarly, the existing literature often fails to consider the alignment of their proposed solutions with current privacy regulations, impeding their practical implementation in real-world scenarios.