Restricting social media for children Govt’s domain, says Delhi HC

The Delhi High Court on Thursday said banning or regulating the use of social media by children fell in the realm of the Centre’s policy-making, and asked the authorities to decide on this aspect. A bench of Justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet PS Arora refused to entertain a public interest litigation (PIL) seeking to restrict the use of social media by children and asked the central Government to consider it as a representation.

The bench, however, refused to set a timeline for the authorities to complete the exercise. “Your views would be taken into consideration by the respondents. The stakeholders have to be consulted. “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 you should ban that. Let them look into it and then pass an order,” the bench told the petitioner’s lawyer.

The petitioner sought a direction to the Centre to consider enacting a law or guidelines to “restrict” the use of social media by children under the age of 13 years.
It also prayed for a framework to “regulate” social media content for children aged 13-16 years.

Central Government Counsel Nidhi Raman said the issue of restricting or regulating the use of social media was a policy issue which has to be considered by the Centre as it may require enactment of a new law.

Such a policy will have wider ramifications, and would require stakeholder consultation, she added.

The Centre’s counsel submitted that the petitioner’s plea can be considered as a representation by the authorities and an appropriate order can be passed.
On being asked by the court if any action was taken after an earlier Supreme Court order on the issue, the lawyer said that the Digital Personal Data Protection Act has been enacted, which also safeguards children’s privacy online.

During the hearing, the counsel for the petitioner raised concerns over the presence of Child Sexual Abuse Material (CSAM) on social media platforms and urged the court to direct the government to take a call on the representation promptly.

“We don’t want to bind them. These are all policy matters,” the bench responded. The court observed that a “ban” is the “ultimate relief” and steps were being taken by the intermediaries against CSAM in the meantime.

The senior counsel for Meta platforms assured that it was taking steps to control CSAM on their platform. He informed that over six lakh posts containing CSAM were taken down on Facebook last year and over two lakh such posts were also removed from Instagram.

The senior counsel added that the “proactive detection rate” of CSAM was 99 per cent for both the platforms.
“The number of accounts taken down is enormous. At the same time, you can’t stop some perverted rogue elements who do it.

“The technology is growing, and it is easier to identify... but what happens is, despite all our efforts, something leaks out, and that comes into the media,” he submitted.