Screens, Systems, and Safeguards: Online Harms, Artificial Intelligence, and the Governance of Children’s Digital Lives in ASEAN

Children across ASEAN are growing up in digital environments shaped by social media, gaming, messaging apps, recommender systems, and generative AI. These tools create opportunities for learning, creativity, and connection, but they also expose young people to new and amplified risks.

Online harms are no longer just about harmful content. Increasingly, they are shaped by systems: algorithms that personalise feeds, design features that encourage prolonged engagement, and AI tools that can generate scams, deepfakes, abusive content, misinformation, and other harms at speed and scale.

This report, developed by Access Partnership Institute and the AI Asia Pacific Institute, examines how governments are responding to this changing landscape and what it means for ASEAN.

Key findings from the report include:

• AI is changing the nature of online harms. Generative AI and recommender systems can increase the speed, scale, personalisation, and believability of harms affecting children and young people.
• Governments are testing different models. Australia, China, France, Spain, and the United Kingdom are each pursuing different combinations of age restrictions, platform duties, age assurance, minors’ modes, and safety-by-design obligations.
• There is no single solution. Age restrictions may offer clarity, but they also raise challenges around privacy, enforcement, circumvention, and children’s rights. Platform duties may better address systemic risks, but require strong governance and regulatory capacity.
• ASEAN’s policy landscape is already moving. Several member states are introducing or considering new child online safety measures, creating momentum but also the risk of fragmented approaches.
• A coordinated, evidence-led approach is needed. ASEAN has an opportunity to build shared standards, strengthen cooperation with platforms, and develop a regional evidence base on what actually works.

As children’s digital lives become more AI-mediated, ASEAN has a chance to shape safeguards that are practical, rights-respecting, and fit for the region’s diverse digital realities.

Read the full report to explore how ASEAN can turn today’s online safety debate into a coordinated programme for safer digital futures.

This report will be launched on 22 May 2026 at a virtual forum on “Screens, Systems, and Safeguards: Online Harms, AI, and Children’s Digital Safety – Perspectives for ASEAN”.

Register here.

Co-moderated by Jonathan Gonzalez, Public Sector Advisory, AI Governance, Access Partnership and Peter Brimble, Board Chair & Vice President, AI Asia Pacific Institute (AIAPI), it features expert panellists Michael des Tombe, Chief Legal Advisor of Netsafe, Maryam Ehsani, Child Safe ME, and Natalie Chia, Director of Research, SG Her Empowerment.