A public interest petition filed by a school based in Indore — seeking an enforceable national framework to address the risks that digital social platforms pose to minors — was taken up by the country's apex court on Friday, 16 October 2026, with notices issued to both the central government and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights for their responses.

Notices went out to the ministries of women and child development and law and justice, along with the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, after a two-judge panel — Chief Justice Surya Kant sitting alongside Justice Joymalya Bagchi — registered a petition brought forward by Emerald Heights International School and its academics director, Siddharth Singh Girnar.

The bench consolidated the petition, brought by Vaibhav Choudhary, with an existing matter already before the court, scheduling both for a joint hearing on 7 December. The petition called on the court to issue a writ or direction holding that the respondents' continued failure to shield children from foreseeable harms — including grooming, sexual exploitation, cyber-bullying, exposure to age-inappropriate content, behavioural profiling, and compulsive-use design features tied to commercial social media platforms — amounted to a violation of Articles 14, 15(3), 21, and 21A of the Constitution, as well as being arbitrary and unreasonable.

The petition called on the government to put in place a binding, purpose-built framework covering children's access to and use of social media, and separately urged the court to direct authorities to ban children below a prescribed age from using such platforms altogether, while putting appropriate controls in place for those above that threshold.

Among the provisions put forward were requirements for platforms to verify users' ages, tailor access to age-appropriate content, obtain confirmed parental consent, and put stronger protections in place against cyberbullying, sexual exploitation, harmful material, and overuse. The petition additionally called on the central government to put in place enforceable rules governing how children may open, hold, and operate accounts on named social-media platforms, with those rules tied to age-based thresholds.

Among the concerns the petitioning school placed before the court were minors holding social media accounts without authorisation, unknown adults making contact with those children, online bullying and harassment directed at them, and disrupted sleep patterns alongside diminished concentration linked to extended mobile phone use.

Among the concerns documented in the plea were those brought forward by parents — touching on the amount of time their children spend in front of screens, unease around online popularity, how young people perceive their own bodies, a tendency to pull away from social interaction, and a noted drop in enthusiasm for both schoolwork and time spent outdoors.

The court filing contended that the problem falls outside what either schools or parents can tackle independently, pointing to platform architecture and operational design — not just the content users see — as the underlying driver of prolonged engagement. The court filing outlined that minors face heightened exposure to a range of online harms, among them grooming, sexual exploitation, blackmail, identity impersonation, the non-consensual sharing of private images, and access to content depicting violence, sexual acts, or self-harm.