Personal, Private, Protected: The Future of Youth Personalization

As the digital landscape shifts toward an AI-driven future, the policy debate often pits tailored experiences against youth safety. This session explores why this is a false choice: personalization and privacy are not a zero-sum game. Digital-native generations have grown up in a world of curated content and often expect digital services to be personalized out of the box. By delivering relevant, age-appropriate content while maintaining high-quality controls, we can build a web that treats kids as kids and teens as teens. Join this discussion of how a “youth-centered by design” framework that is built to prioritize safety and digital well-being from the beginning protects younger users without falling back on rigid age verification mandates that undermine privacy.

What you will learn:

• Why the entire ecosystem, from OS  to developer, has a role in age assurance, and the privacy risks of centralized platform-level mandates.

• Strategies for building systems with privacy controls that prevent harms while ensuring content quality.

• Why risk-based age assurance outperforms rigid verification in protecting both youth safety and information access.

• How surfacing age-appropriate content enables personalized learning and support for younger audiences.

Sponsored by: Google