Parental Obligations and the Protection of Children’s and Adolescents’ Virtual Identity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.33324/dicere.v3i1.1097Keywords:
children’s rights, personal data protection, sharenting, virtual identityAbstract
This article examines whether parental authority in digital environments may justify the discretionary exposure of children and adolescents, or whether it is limited by a reinforced duty of protection. Through doctrinal, hermeneutic and comparative legal analysis, it studies the Ecuadorian Constitution, the Organic Law on Personal Data Protection, its General Regulation, the 2026 general rule on family or domestic data processing, the Code on Children and Adolescents, and international standards such as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, General Comment No. 25 and the American Convention on Human Rights. It argues that parents and legal representatives do not have free disposal over children’s digital traces, image, voice, geolocation, health, school or behavioral data; rather, they act as fiduciary guarantors bound by the best interests of the child, progressive autonomy, minimization and accountability. The article’s contribution is to connect those principles with Ecuador’s recent domestic-exemption rule and to propose an operational legality test for parental publication, sharenting and family influencing practices.
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References
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