Rethinking parental responsibility in light of children’s fundamental rights in the digital age
Résumé
This chapter emphasises the need for law to adapt to new technologies in organising parent-child relations considering the latter’s fundamental rights. Children’s protection is entrusted to their parents, who can represent them. Nevertheless, parental prerogatives can be a way for adults to violate the child’s rights and legitimise these violations. The study of these violations in the digital age is particularly relevant, as new technologies encourage and facilitate them. The problem is to ensure the protection of a child’s rights despite the heteronomy which characterises childhood. Nowadays, parental prerogatives are indeed apprehended as powers whose sole finality is the child’s best interests. The legal consequence of this conception is that parental actions could be submitted to a control of their legitimacy by the European Court of Human Rights’ fair balance and proportionality test: violations of children’s fundamental rights should only be tolerated if parental action is necessary and proportionate.