Delhi High Court Directs Centre to Decide on Regulating Children's Social Media Access
The Delhi High Court on Thursday stated that banning or regulating children's access to social media falls under the realm of policy-making and urged the Central Government to determine a further course of action.
A bench comprising Justice V. Kameswar Rao and Justice Manmeet P. S. Arora declined to entertain a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking curbs on social media use by minors, directing the Centre to treat the petition as a formal representation.
"Their views have to be taken and then it is in the realm of a policy. It is not for a court to give a direction that you should ban this or that. Let them look into it and then pass an order," the bench told the petitioner's counsel.
The PIL sought directions for the Centre to frame guidelines and enact a law to protect children under 13 years of age by imposing restrictions on their social media access, as well as regulating digital content for adolescents aged between 13 and 16.
The plea was filed by Kirti Dua, a mother of a three-year-old child, along with a paediatrician. Filed through advocate Anshul Gupta and argued by senior advocate Pinky Anand, the petition contended that the easy availability of addictive content across platforms poses a serious threat to the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of children.
The petitioners stated that India lacks a robust, privacy-preserving digital ID system for minors, noting that existing parental consent mechanisms are weak and easily bypassed. The counsel for the petitioner also raised concerns over the presence of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on social media platforms and urged the bench to direct the government to take a timely decision on the matter.
Appearing in the matter, counsel for Meta Platforms assured the court that measures were being taken to control CSAM across its services. The counsel informed the bench that over six lakh posts containing CSAM were taken down on Facebook last year, while more than two lakh such posts were removed from Instagram.
