A two-judge Supreme Court bench comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Bagchi has taken up a public interest litigation filed by an Indore school, issuing notice to the Centre over calls for a legally enforceable child-safety framework governing social media platforms. The petition draws attention to a disparity whereby minors can register on such platforms through nothing more than a self-declared birth date, even as separate laws bar those same minors from purchasing liquor, tobacco, or acid, and require age verification before they can access adult content on OTT services.
The two petitioners are Emerald Heights International School — a co-educational day-and-boarding institution in Indore operating under CBSE affiliation — and its academics director Siddharth Singh Girnar. The matter has been brought before the court through an Article 32 filing. According to its own figures, the institution enrols roughly 4,115 students and describes its relationship with them through the legal concept of acting in place of a parent.
Three advocates — Khushbu Jain, Mayank Singh Rawat, and Zaid Ahmed — prepared the petition, which reached the court through Advocate-on-Record Vaibhav Choudhary.
The petitioners contend that platform-imposed age limits amount to a voluntary floor of 13, typically verified only through a user's own declaration, and argue that such a benchmark has no grounding in the protections Indian law extends to minors — given that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 classifies anyone under 18 as a child. The petition further contends that children, including those considerably younger than 18, regularly encounter social media platforms that were neither built nor run with child safety as a guiding principle, and that those platforms are designed around capturing attention, extending time on site, and drawing revenue from user behaviour.
The institution pointed to patterns observed within its own classrooms and boarding facilities as the basis for its position: pupils below the specified age were found to be maintaining and using social media profiles, receiving unsolicited contact from unknown individuals, and arriving at school fatigued, unfocused, and unable to engage with their studies. The filing notes that parent-teacher gatherings have regularly surfaced parental concern about how deeply social media has embedded itself in children's daily lives.
A separate argument put forward by the petitioners holds that the absence of national legislation has left protection uneven, with Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Goa each having rolled out their own frameworks under differing age thresholds. Grounding the petition in Entry 31 of List I alongside Article 253, the argument advanced holds that authority over these platforms rests with the national government — a position reinforced by the observable reality that children in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, all using the same services, are subject to varying age-related restrictions, or none at all, depending solely on their state of residence. Responsibility for the conduct in question, according to the petition, falls on the intermediary parties involved.
The petition draws on a 2021 NCPCR survey finding that roughly 38 percent of ten-year-olds covered by the study held Facebook accounts, and contends that platform operators have been aware of underage usage without taking corrective steps, given that a larger user base translates into greater advertising revenue. It further argues that product features including infinite scrolling, autoplay video, streak mechanics, reaction buttons, and persistent notifications exert a disproportionate pull on younger users, making any resulting harm a foreseeable outcome of deliberate design choices rather than an unforeseen side effect. The petition also argues that when an algorithm surfaces harmful material to a child who made no such request, the intermediary functions as an active contributor to that outcome rather than a neutral conduit for third-party content.
On the question of safe harbour, the petitioners maintain that a platform operator who permits underage account holders, exposes children's profiles to unknown third parties, and allows unsolicited contact from adults cannot be regarded as having exercised the due diligence required under Section 79 of the Information Technology Act alongside Rule 3(1)(b) of the IT Rules.
The petition contends that, because contracts entered into with minors carry no legal force under Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, platforms are gathering children's personal data without a lawful basis for doing so. The filing goes on to identify a number of gaps in the IT Rules, 2021: neither the IT Act nor the Rules lay down a floor age for social media account creation, and parental consent goes unaddressed by both instruments.
Two further gaps are identified in the document: the phrase "harmful to child" under Rule 3(1)(b) carries no accompanying definition, and the obligation placed on platforms under Rule 4(4) to deploy detection technology for child sexual abuse material is worded as an "endeavour" rather than as a binding duty. Alongside these identified gaps, the document proposes a three-tier age structure under which children below 13 would be prohibited from holding accounts, those between 13 and 16 could use platforms only where verifiable consent from a parent or guardian is established together with supervision and child-safe settings, and users aged 16 to 18 would remain covered by data protection provisions and protections against content deemed harmful.
The position advanced holds that this arrangement intrudes on individual rights to a lesser degree than an outright ban would, and that it therefore clears the proportionality threshold established in both Modern Dental College and Puttaswamy.
To draw on overseas precedent, the petition points to Australia's law setting 16 as the minimum age for platform access — enacted with effect from 10 December 2025 — under which roughly 4.7 million accounts belonging to under-16 users were, according to available reports, rendered inaccessible within approximately five weeks of the rule taking effect. Policy steps taken or announced across France, Denmark, Spain, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and the European Union are drawn into the discussion as well.
The petitioners draw on the Union's own Economic Survey 2025–26 alongside a February 17, 2026 ministerial statement to the effect that age-linked regulation is to be put in place, contending that failing to act once a risk has been identified amounts to an exercise of arbitrary power. No reply to the submission lodged with the authorities on 9 March 2026 has been forthcoming.
The filing also references an earlier Supreme Court notice already issued in a related matter — Just Rights for Children Alliance v. Union of India — pointing to an existing parallel proceeding on the same question. The respondents in the matter include the Union of India along with additional named parties, and proceedings brought by Emerald Heights International School, joined by additional named parties, form the basis of the case under review. The hearing proceeded before a two-member panel comprising CJI Kant and Justice Bagchi. A procedural hearing in the matter is scheduled for 16 October 2026.
