Children’s Drawings Expose the Harmful Reality of Online Platforms

The European Association of Communications Agencies (EACA), in partnership with the international non-profit 5Rights Foundation, has launched Childhood Redrawn, a landmark advertising campaign designed to encourage lawmakers to demand tech firms design better protection for children into their devices and platforms.

The campaign – created by a team of young creatives from Innocean Berlin – challenges people to rethink how children interact with technology by showing how it’s damaging their health, development and relationships.

It uses primary school-style drawings to illustrate the way that technology is changing aspirations and behaviour for the worse. Each ad features a hard-hitting warning to press the point home, including 'Kids are drained by content they should never be addicted to', 'Kids sign terms and conditions they should never be offered' and 'Kids are promoted content they should never come across'.

The tagline for each message is that 'Tech must be safe for kids' and calls on the public to sign a 5Rights petition demanding that lawmakers make child safety certification a pre requisite for all tech used by kids, protect under 13s from personalisation, with graduated access for all under 18s and bans for services that fail to comply and expose children to risk and harm.

With almost all children aged 3–17 now online and using digital platforms, research by 5Rights Foundation found that children can be exposed to harmful online content within hours of creating a social media account and after engaging with harmful content, can be repeatedly targeted by recommendation algorithms within minutes.

The campaign will debut on digital screens in Brussels on May 15th, followed by outdoor sites across Belgium, UK, and Germany throughout June, supported by media space generously donated by Bauer Media, Amplifi Global, JCDecaux and HYGH. Other markets will also run the campaign, which has been developed in 23 languages, through the summer, while audio and video versions are also planned for later in the year.

The thinking behind the campaign will also be presented in Cannes Lions in June as part of EACA events designed to showcase the power of advertising to create positive change for communities and society.

This is the first campaign to come from EACA’s Campaign4Good programme, which was set up by the organisation’s Young Board in 2025 to challenge creative agencies in Europe to devise campaigns around a societal issue. EACA will initiate a new challenge every two years, using an open competition to challenge young talent in the industry to create a campaign that delivers societal change.

This time round the challenge was to imagine a future where digital spaces are designed with children in mind, raising public awareness on how exploitative design harms children. The winning team from Innocean was announced by EU Commissioner for Democracy, Justice, the Rule of Law and Consumer Protection, Michael McGrath at the Effie Europe Gala Dinner on 10 December 2025 in Brussels.

Michael’s involvement highlights the strong political momentum behind efforts to protect children online and reinforces the shared responsibility of industry, policymakers and civil society to drive meaningful change. Safeguarding children in the digital environment has become a top priority for both EU institutions and Member States with many countries weighing up new measures to regulate children's interaction with digital platforms including social media bans.

“We know that young people in our industry want to deliver better for society and the EACA’s Young Board initiative Campaign4Good helps them do just that. This brilliant creative work from Innocean, project managed by Dentsu Creative, shows how advertising can highlight key issues that impact on us all and how we can drive change to make improvements for us all. It’s wonderful that the first phase of the campaign has now started, showcasing a clear message for change in the digital ecosystem,” said Charley Stoney, EACA CEO.

​Leanda Barrington-Leach, executive director at 5Rights Foundation said, “Children are being exposed to digital products designed to maximise engagement, influence behaviour and extract data, while the responsibility for managing the fallout is too often pushed onto families. Through this campaign with EACA, we’re bringing together the creative industries across Europe to make one thing clear: children deserve technology that is safe by design and companies must be held accountable for delivering it.”

​Mario Andric, Linda Neumann and Axel Fonteyne, the creative team behind the campaign, said, “We used the juxtaposition of children's handwriting against the gruesome design of the internet to better visualise the incompatibility of both worlds. We relied heavily on craft, hand-drawing each image to better emphasise the look of a child's handwriting and deliver the emotional impact of the idea. The visuals vary from text to drawings, taking inspiration from the different ways children often use to communicate feelings and thoughts.”