On October 15, the Supreme Court recognised children’s fundamental right to access and use the Internet under Articles 21 and 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. It rejected blanket restrictions and said children should not be kept offline because platforms fail to remove abusive material. The ruling sets an important principle, but it does not answer how children should be protected. India must safeguard them without making access to information depend on parental approval, intrusive identity checks, or private platforms’ procedures. Policy must also separate protection from surveillance. There is no doubt that parental consent has a legitimate purpose. Young children need guidance in dealing with grooming, harmful content, and services designed to keep them online for hours. But consent becomes a problem when it is the only route to access. India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, and the Rules notified in November 2025 rely on it, requiring verifiable parental consent before companies process children’s personal data, subject to exceptions. Implementation is phased. It is well known that not every home is safe. A teenager facing abuse, a child whose family rejects their identity, or a young person seeking confidential health advice may be unable to approach a parent. Rules should distinguish younger children from older adolescents, whose capacity for independent decisions grows with age. Helplines, health information, education and public services should not require unnecessary parental consent. Of course, age-based safeguards need a way to establish age, but must that mean collecting identity documents from every user? No. Under the notified rules, platforms must verify that the person giving consent is an adult, which could link a child’s account to an adult’s identity record. The Supreme Court has warned that age restrictions can increase the risks of identification, monitoring, and data misuse. How about using less intrusive methods? A trusted provider could confirm whether a user is above or below a specified age without disclosing identity. On-device systems could estimate age without sending data to a platform. Neither is error-free, so users need a way to challenge wrong decisions. India should require data minimisation, limited retention, and independent audits, and bar the use of age-verification data for advertising or profiling. Next, the government must distinguish access to harmful content from access to an entire service. Exposure to sexual exploitation does not automatically justify blocking a platform that offers educational resources, news, and support. Restrictions should target identified risks and use the least intrusive effective method, so proportionality guides legislation and enforcement. Platforms, too, shape what children see through recommendations, notifications, advertising, and design, and control contact settings and complaint mechanisms. However, policy often places the burden on children and parents. India needs enforceable duties: private accounts by default for younger users, limits on unsolicited contact from unknown adults, effective reporting and appeal systems, and limits on targeted advertising to children. Repeated failures should attract meaningful penalties. Abuse material needs the same care. The Court has directed the government to strengthen systems for detecting and removing child sexual exploitation and abuse material, including a national database of verified hash values and URLs. Its directions require multiple verification stages and review by at least three trained human analysts. Independent audits and clear procedures to challenge wrongful removals are needed so the database does not restrict lawful material without scrutiny. However, enforcement matters as much as legislation. A regulator needs technical expertise, independence, and powers to investigate failures. Compliance should be judged by independent audits, complaint-resolution times, and evidence of reduced harm, not by the number of accounts blocked. Otherwise, platforms may over-remove lawful content to avoid penalties. The government should publish its methods and findings for researchers and civil society to assess. Since much abuse goes unreported, assessments must explain their limitations. Foreign laws offer limited guidance because they address different problems. The United States’ Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act requires verifiable parental consent before covered services collect personal information from children under 13, with exceptions; it does not generally ban social media. The United Kingdom’s Online Safety Act requires highly effective age checks only for services giving access to specified harmful content, including pornography. India should assess the evidence, privacy costs, and scope for evasion before adopting similar measures. Australia’s under-16 social media restrictions took effect in December 2025, and a June 2026 study in The BMJ found that over 85 per cent of surveyed adolescents under 16 still used covered platforms three months later. This does not show long-term effects or prove the restrictions failed to reduce harm, but it shows why governments must evaluate outcomes rather than assume a ban works. India’s own data justify concern. NCRB recorded 1,376 cybercrime cases against children in 2021, 1,823 in 2022, and 1,902 in 2023. These are registered cases, not estimates of all online harm, and they cannot show which intervention works best. The government should publish more detailed data on grooming, cyberbullying, exploitation, and case outcomes while protecting children’s identities. India must also account for unequal access. A child with a personal phone and supportive parents has more options than one who shares a device or has controlling parents. For children in remote areas or with disabilities, online resources may be a key source of information and support. The Union government should therefore publish draft age bands, clarify exemptions, require privacy-preserving age checks, and set enforceable platform duties. It should consult children, state governments, schools, child rights commissions, and experts before finalising rules. The Court has made clear that safety cannot justify keeping children offline. Can India show that protection and access can coexist? P. John J. Kennedy is former professor and dean, Christ University, Bengaluru.
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