AI Insight
This article argues that digital determinants of health—the structural conditions through which digital infrastructures, business models, and design choices shape health outcomes—are currently absent from public health policy and fragmented across regulatory sectors. The authors advocate for a public health governance approach that addresses digital systems and environments holistically rather than regulating individual technologies in isolation. This framework shifts focus from individual user responsibility toward governing the structural features of digital systems that produce health risks and inequities, particularly for children and young people.
Why it matters
This perspective challenges current fragmented approaches to digital health regulation and calls for integrated governance that treats digital infrastructure as a social determinant of health. Such an approach could lead to more effective policies protecting vulnerable populations like children from digital harms while reducing health inequities created by digital systems.
Understand the Science
The digital determinants of health are the structural conditions through which digital infrastructures, business models, and design choices shape health outcomes. Yet these determinants remain largely outside public health policy and remain fragmented across regulatory sectors. Rather than regulating individual technologies in isolation, governance should ensure that digital systems and environments advance population health and reduce inequities. A public health approach shifts attention from individual responsibility—and the tendency to blame users—towards the governance of the structural features that produce health risks and inequities.