A child's right to privacy, a parent's duty to care and social media

Abstract

The expansion in the use of social media has resulted in children of a very young age engaging in the extensive use of social media platforms. In as much as social media are an effective and inexpensive medium of communication, it also carries challenges which are of growing concern. Social media are associated with many cybercrimes and because of that parents and other caregivers feel the need to check the activities of their children in the use of social media in order to fulfil their parental duties. In the course of checking the activities on social media, parents and other caregivers will end up invading the child’s right to information privacy. This mini-dissertation is motivated by the following legal question: To what extent do parental responsibilities and rights include a right to interfere with a child’s right to privacy in using social media? The mini-dissertation answered the research question through an extensive and comprehensive discussion of the relevant international, regional and national laws applicable to the topic. The above-mentioned was carried out through an investigation of the interface between social media and law in attempting to ascertain whether there is law regulating activities on social media. Furthermore the mini-dissertation deals with the international, regional as well as South African legal framework dealing with the parental responsibilities and rights and the child’s right to privacy. The mini-dissertation produced a number of key findings which include that there is no law which directly deals with the issue of social media but the interface between social media and the law is extracted indirectly; children are bearers of the right to privacy like any other human being both in international and South African law; parents are vested with parental responsibilities and rights but the duty to care is not only limited to biological parents, it extends to other care-givers, including the state. The main conclusion drawn from this mini-dissertation is that when exercising the duty to care, parents and other caregivers are governed by the best interests of the child and also the fact that the right to privacy can be limited by law of general application in terms of section 36 of the Constitution. It is concluded that when parents interfere with the child’s right to privacy they should do so only if they are acting in the best interests of the child, whilst fulfilling their parental duties. Lastly, like any other right the child’s right to privacy can be limited by section 36