The time is now: A new frontier in child safety on smartphones

Smartphones are now central to the childhood experience, yet child protection on devices remains ineffective and easy to circumvent. Existing safety tools rely on apps that cannot monitor the social media messages, including enrypted apps, that dominate how children communicate today. Crucially, these solutions often only react after harm has occurred. 

This session introduces Chirp, a new OS-level approach that embeds child protection deep into the smartphone itself—active from the moment a child receives their first phone. By going deeper in the tech stack, Chirp offers real-time, enforceable protection in environments such as encrypted apps where other tools fall short. This work—focusing on cyberbullying, grooming, and self-harm/suicide ideation—redefines what digital safety can mean for families.

For Telcos, OEMs, and policymakers, this represents a chance to lead on a new frontier of protection. With system-level child protection technically viable, early adoption can unlock meaningful differentiation, meet growing expectations, and help set the new standard in child online safety. With the infrastructure in place, now is the time for stakeholders to align and ensure safety becomes as foundational as connectivity for children.