SC notice to Centre on plea seeking social media safeguards for minors

The Supreme Court sought responses from the Centre on a PIL seeking safeguards for minors accessing social media. The plea seeks parental consent and identity verification, arguing that children face risks including exploitation, grooming, cyberbullying, data misuse and exposure to inappropriate content

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday sought responses from the Union ministries of electronics and information technology and law and justice on a plea seeking safeguards for minors accessing social media and to ensure that no such platform enters into a contract with a child below 18 years of age.

A bench of Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana issued notices to the two ministries on the plea filed by NGO Just Rights for Children Alliance.

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“We need some safeguards in India,” the bench said after taking note of brief submissions by senior advocate HS Phoolka, who appeared for the NGO.

The plea sought directions to the Centre to take appropriate steps to inform “the digital platforms including social media intermediaries that any contract entered into by them with any child below the age of eighteen years is void ab initio (invalid from the moment of creation) and that any steps taken in furtherance thereof shall be immediately suspended”.

The plea sought enforcement and protection of the fundamental rights of children below 18, who, despite their statutory incapacity to contract under Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, are currently permitted to independently create and maintain accounts and access social media and other digital platforms without an effective, uniform and enforceable mechanism to safeguard their legal incapacity and constitutional rights in the digital environment.

The plea said it is a settled principle of law that a minor lacks contractual capacity and that a contract entered into by a minor is invalid at the outset.

The continued exposure of children to contractual and data-driven digital ecosystems without meaningful age-assurance and parental safeguards is not a mere regulatory deficiency, but raises grave constitutional concerns, exposing a particularly vulnerable class to foreseeable and serious harms, including online grooming, sexual exploitation, trafficking, behavioural manipulation and profiling, misuse of personal data, cyberbullying and exposure to age-inappropriate content, it said.

Such unregulated exposure threatens children’s right to life, dignity, privacy, safety, healthy development and overall well-being, and consequently calls for urgent judicial intervention to ensure that the digital environment does not become a domain where the statutory and constitutional protection accorded to children is rendered illusory, it said.

The petition contended that despite strict penal provisions prohibiting the dissemination and storage of Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material, internet platforms have failed to deploy automated content-filtering tools and age-verification mechanisms.

The plea contended that platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat (India) permit users to create accounts from the age of 13, while Indian law treats persons below 18 as minors.

The PIL, filed through advocate-on-record Sakthom Meheshwari, sought directions to amend the Information Technology (Intermediary Guidelines and Digital Media Ethics Code) Rules, 2021, or frame specific guidelines to ensure that no digital platform enters into a contract with a child below 18 without the consent of the parent or lawful guardian, subject to identity verification/e-KYC of the parent or guardian.

“Issue a writ, order or direction, directing respondent to issue guideline/advisories to digital platform(s) including social media intermediaries mandating that, wherever a minor is permitted to access or use any digital platform(s), such access or use shall be subject to a legally recognised mechanism of parental or lawful guardian involvement, including verification/e-KYC of the identity and authority of the parent or guardian, commensurate with the nature and risk of the service,” it said.