The Supreme Court has held that children, like any other individual, have a fundamental right to access and use the internet.
“We have no hesitation in saying that the right to access and use the internet is a fundamental right of every individual under Article 21 read with Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution,” the court observed on October 16.
It added: “Our children, irrespective of their age, enjoy the same rights, and to deny the same altogether would be as absurd as saying children below a certain age do not have a conscience worth protecting or a freedom of speech worth expressing.”
Justices J B Pardiwala and K V Chandran made the observation on October 15 while hearing applications filed by the child rights NGO ‘Just Rights for Children Alliance’ and another applicant alleging that social media platforms were failing to meet their legal obligations to report child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) to Indian authorities.
“The safety of our children and their freedom are not at odds with each other. Our children are entitled to both,” the bench stated.
Refusing to order a blanket age-related ban, the court called for stricter parental controls, removal of sex abuse material and child mode controls on social media platforms.
Observing that children do not cease to use the internet merely because the law prohibits them from doing so, the top court proposed a strict framework to protect children from online child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
The court also called out authorities and social media intermediaries for “lack of earnest initiative to protect the victims” and flagged repeated circulation of child abuse material despite clear guidelines.
“We are deeply saddened to note that the news reports placed before us by the applicants flagging alleged incidents of paid promotions of CSEAM on social media platforms through redirect links and websites is only one rare instance of such harmful activities being discovered and brought to light,” the court noted.
“There comes a time when we must ask ourselves, how many more victims of such harmful content must continue to suffer, before our conscience is stirred into making collective effort in the right direction,” it added.
The applicants sought uniform reporting procedures, a centralised portal and action against non-compliant intermediaries. The court addressed these concerns and directed the Centre to create a national database of digital identifiers and URLs linked to confirmed abusive material to facilitate its detection and removal.
The bench directed the Centre to frame guidelines and standard operating procedures for perceptual hash-matching, URL listing and other technological measures to detect and remove such material.
“We cannot emphasise this enough, that there can be no space for non-consensual sexually exploitative and abusive material on the internet, particularly on platforms that are readily accessible to the most impressionable and vulnerable of our society.”
The Bench, however, said that their observations were not against age-based restrictions on online access. “We acknowledge that some form of safeguards are necessary for the safety of our children online and the moderation of the content accessible at their fingertips,” it said.
The court suggested a system that placed greater emphasis on parental consent, guidance and supervision of children’s access to social media platforms, along with a dedicated “child mode” for such accounts, with measures proportionate to the objective of ensuring their safety.
