Digital safety and child protection initiatives in the PH

In the Philippines, efforts to enhance digital safeguards for minors have gained momentum through both legislative and private sector initiatives. The Philippine Senate is deliberating on Senate Bill No. 1819, the Child Online Protection and Safety Act, which seeks to provide law enforcement with expanded investigative tools, such as the ability to issue subpoenas for subscriber data and conduct undercover operations to combat the grooming of minors.

Supporting these legislative efforts, the telecommunications company Globe has advocated for a coordinated approach involving social media platforms, schools, and families to ensure age-appropriate content and network-level protections. Following school shootings in Tacloban City and Zamboanga, cybersecurity expert Albert Dela Cruz has further proposed a national digital safety framework. Dela Cruz argues that protection should shift from individual parental responsibility to systemic design, calling for mandatory child-safety controls on devices and platforms by default to mitigate risks from algorithmic recommendations and weak age verification.