Ayushi Mishra is a fifth-year student at RMLNLU, Lucknow
Introduction
Childhood today unfolds in a space no longer confined to homes, schools, or neighbourhoods. For millions of young people, the internet is a central part of daily life, used for education, social interaction, entertainment, and self-expression. During and after the COVID-19 pandemic, digital usage reached unprecedented levels globally. This expansion was not limited to adults, but also a significant number of children, who turned to the internet to attend online classes, access educational resources, and engage in leisure activities such as gaming, video streaming, and social media engagement. This transformation has created unprecedented opportunities for children. However, children’s interaction with personalised and algorithmically curated feeds largely remains unregulated. As a result, they are vulnerable to significant harms, including exposure to harmful content, sleep and mental-health disorders, exploitation, radicalisation, and in extreme cases, death.
In August 2025, Australia announced its plans to restrict YouTube for children and teenagers to facilitate their online safety from harmful content. The move reignited the debate over whether children should have access to social media as various countries enact regulations and policies to ensure child protection. Despite having one of the world’s largest populations of young internet users, India lacks a comprehensive, child-focused policy and framework to ensure online safety. Therefore, keeping the technological evolutions in mind, India needs to ensure that children’s rights are fully protected in the digital environment through policy and legislation.
The social media dilemma for policymakers
The internet, especially social media, holds a crucial place in the lives of its young users. On the one hand, digital platforms like YouTube, Instagram, and many others have become powerful mechanisms for accessing high-quality educational and informative resources, news, and skill learning, which are beneficial for children. However, these same platforms often come under mass criticism and scrutiny for exposing young users to harmful and sensitive material, algorithm-driven digital addiction, misinformation, and privacy risks. This dual nature of cyberspace, where the same platform can be both beneficial and detrimental, has created a dilemma for policymakers, educators, and parents alike. They face the challenge of how children can benefit from the internet’s vast potential while being shielded from its most dangerous elements.
According to a report from the Davos World Economic Forum, cyberspace and technological evolution have resulted in tremendous opportunities for children. Technology, such as generative AI, has immense educational potential, including homework assistance, easy-to-understand explanations of complex educational concepts, and personalised learning experiences that can adapt to an individual’s learning style and pace. It will also be transformative for children with disabilities, who will be able to interact and co-create more effectively with digital systems through text, speech, or images. However, at the same time, it could also be used by bad actors to cause harm to children’s well-being.
Additionally, the addictive nature of social media in adults and children alike is another major cause of concern. According to a new survey, around 60% of children between the ages of 5-16 years showcase behaviours indicative of potential digital addiction. Therefore, it’s crucial to find a balanced approach with respect to digital access. We need to ensure that its educational and skill-based benefits can be used without harming children physically or mentally, while also acknowledging the potential risks of overexposure.
Global best practices for online safety of children
A. Platform-Level Safety Measures:
Over the years, social media companies have come increasingly under pressure to ensure children’s well-being and mental health on their platforms, as the cases of cyberbullying and harassment have increased. Amidst increasing scrutiny, many platforms have added parental controls and child safety search features. For example, Meta introduced parental supervision tools that enable parents to set time limits, see who their child follows or is followed by, and track the time spent on Instagram, while not allowing parents to access their child’s messages. However, this feature is optional in case of other platforms like TikTok, where both kids and parents must agree to use it.
Instagram has gone a step further by introducing separate teen accounts for those under 18, in an attempt to make the platform safer for children in the U.S., the UK, Canada, and Australia. This means that anyone under 18 signing up for Instagram will be placed into a teen account.
To facilitate age-appropriate content and protection, many apps and platforms have also resorted to age verification for registration and access to their platforms. However, the problem persists as verification of a person’s age is not as easy and reliable as they sign up for online services and apps. The apps were created for adults, and even when the companies have added some protections over the years, they aren’t fundamental and impactful. Undoubtedly, a blanket ban or denial of internet services to children will deprive them of its educational benefits, while making them technologically ill-equipped to navigate the platforms in adulthood. Therefore, beyond the platform-level initiatives, many countries have also introduced comprehensive legislation and regulatory policies to ensure child protection.
B. United Kingdom: Age-Appropriate Design Code
The United Kingdom’s Age-Appropriate Design Code 2020 is widely regarded as a pioneering framework for children’s online safety. It mandates a risk-based approach to estimate a child’s age with certainty, along with 15 design standards to protect children’s data. It also prohibits platforms from including designs that can manipulate user behaviour or promote an addictive pattern of use.
The code has led to various changes related to child safety on online platforms. Accordingly, many platforms have made changes to ensure that children have better default settings upon joining and are exposed to minimal risk. A recent study found that platforms such as Meta, Google, TikTok, and Snapchat have made 128 child safety and privacy changes.
C. United States: Duty of Care and Child Safety Legislation
In 2024, the U.S. Senate passed legislation to make tech companies accountable for harmful content. Known as the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0), it requires companies to exercise a “duty of care” towards minors, mandating reasonable actions to prevent harm. It also requires online platforms frequently used by minors to default to the safest settings, thus reinforcing proactive responsibility. As it awaits its enactment, many such policies and legislations have already been enforced in the respective states.
D. Australia: Under-16 Social Media Restrictions
On similar lines, in November 2024, Australia introduced a landmark legislation, banning social media for children below 16. According to the Australian government, around two-thirds of 14 to 17-year-old children have viewed extremely harmful material online, like drug abuse, suicide or self-harm and violence, making online safety a tough parenting challenge. As per the law, social media platforms are required to take reasonable steps to keep out Australians younger than 16, and any failure in the implementation of this law would attract a fine of up to AU$50 million. In August 2025, it widened the ban, adding YouTube to the list as well.
India’s Current Regulatory Landscape & Gaps
According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) Rural, over 30% of Indian teenagers in rural areas can browse the Internet and close to 50% can find a video on YouTube. Yet, a majority are vulnerable to the dangers of the online world with limited technological safety knowledge. While more than 90% used social media, only 52.3% knew how to block a profile, and only 47.8% knew how to make their account private.
While India works upon strengthening its data protection regime and legislation, through legislation like the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act, 2023, it lacks a child-specific protection policy. According to the act, children can access any platform which collects their personal data only after getting verifiable parental consent. However, the challenge remains to enforce this law positively. In one case, the Karnataka High Court observed that schoolchildren are increasingly addicted to social media and remarked that the Central government should, at the very least, introduce a minimum user age limit for accessing social media. It remains to be seen if the government implements such a policy or legislation, which is a need of the hour.
The way forward
Undoubtedly, the digital space is a double-edged sword with its benefits and threats, and therefore requires a balanced approach for policymaking, especially with respect to children. Safeguarding children’s rights in the digital space requires a balanced framework that preserves the benefits of internet access while mitigating its inherent risks. To ensure this, India needs a concise, goal-driven and enforceable ‘Child Online Safety Code’ with a mandatory age-appropriate access policy, strict platform accountability, and penalties for violations. India must consider global models, such as the UK’s Online Safety Act and Australia’s restrictions on minors, which have demonstrated the impact and significance of a statutory duty of care for tech companies.
In addition to these measures, India should also look for innovative solutions. For instance, in the case of age-assurance, rather than relying on self-declaration, high-assurance verification tools and AI-driven age estimation should be used to prevent easy bypassing by minors. Further, platforms should adopt safety-by-design obligations, ensuring that their algorithms and interface systems don’t create addictive and harmful engagement patterns for children. Additionally, emerging risks like sexualised AI-companions and avatars must be strictly prohibited from being accessed without reliable age-verification, as they may expose younger users to unsafe behaviours. Lastly, India must establish a specialised “Children’s Online Safety Authority” responsible for ensuring “Child Impact Assessment” compliance for new platform features and grievance redressal.
Alongside regulation, we must work on digital literacy programmes to be integrated into schools to help children navigate online spaces responsibly and safely, while making them well-equipped with technology like AI. By incorporating the best features of global online safety laws and adapting them to our own context, India can create a responsible digital ecosystem, ensuring that its children grow up as safe, informed, and empowered digital citizens.