A report by Centre for Legal Action and Behaviour Change (C-LAB) has demanded a national-level policy regulating the use of digital media by children, including a ban on smartphones in schools and age-restricted access to online spaces. It also suggests that legal obligations and penalties should be attached to digital platforms, never to the child or parent.

The report, ‘‘Prevention By Design: From Voluntary Self-Regulation to a State Duty of Care”, was launched at a side event at the United Nations General Assembly in New York. The event, “Responsible AI & Safe Digital Spaces for Children”, was organised by Athena Infonomics and Just Rights for Children (JRC). C-LAB is one of India’s leading research and policy institutes and a partner of JRC, the country’s largest network of NGOs working on child protection and child support rights.

As digital participation is not a choice for children anymore, the question now is whether online spaces are designed for their rights, safety, and development, and who bears responsibility for it. The study attempts to answer these questions by providing recommendations for a national-level framework. It has compared policies and laws related to age-based restrictions on the use of digital media in over 40 countries and school phone policies in 110 countries.

According to the report, child protection has moved from being a matter of self-regulation by platforms to a “binding legal obligation of the state”.

To tackle the issue on one front, the report strongly supports national bright-line restrictions on smartphones in schools. A bright-line restriction is a clearly defined, objective standard that establishes a fixed legal boundary with no room for flexible interpretation. According to the report, which analysed smartphone school ban policies in 110 countries, as many as 52 countries have national legislative bans on smartphone use in schools, 31 more have issued national guidance directing such restrictions, and only nine leave the matter to individual schools. The study calls for a ban on pupil smartphone use throughout the school day in primary and lower secondary education.

Speaking at the launch of the report, Just Rights for Children, founder, Bhuwan Ribhu stated, “The digital world has expanded the scale of harm, while systems for preventing it have not kept pace. The world needs mandatory reporting and an international legal framework to address online harms that cross borders. Social media platforms cannot be allowed to place children in contracts or arrangements that undermine their rights and safety. A child below the age of 18 cannot legally enter into a contract, and any such agreement is void ab initio.”

He further added that this report applies the principles of child protection and the rule of law to technology itself. “At the scale of digital platforms, we cannot wait for millions of harms to occur before acting – we must design systems that prevent harm and use technology to identify risks early and connect children to protection,” Ribhu said.

According to the report, a few years ago, only some countries were contemplating measures like restricting online access to children, but the landscape shifted once Australia banned social media for children under 16. Now such regulations have been implemented in China, Indonesia and Malaysia as well, while similar proposals are before parliaments in some countries and under discussion in many others.

To this end, the report analysed statutory frameworks on contractual obligations and parental consent in selected countries. Statutory standards differ in the age threshold below which a child cannot form a binding contract with an online platform. In the US, it is 14 years in Florida and 16 years in Ohio. Vietnam has a similar threshold, but India has fixed it at 18 years. This means India treats an agreement entered into by a minor as void ab initio.

The report recommends a five-pillar framework to address these issues:
The first pillar calls for banning social media accounts for children below 15 and supervised access for 15- to 16-year-olds only with verified guardian consent. It says all responsibilities should lie with digital platforms, not the child or parents. The second pillar recommends prohibiting the profiling of minors for targeted advertising, and requiring platforms to disable features such as infinite scrolling and dark patterns that encourage compulsive use. The third pillar proposes a privacy-protecting age-verification system in which digital IDs reveal only a person’s age, with strict limits on data collection. The fourth pillar calls for an independent online safety regulator, mandatory reporting of violations to authorities and financial penalties for serious or systemic breaches. The fifth pillar recommends involving children in policymaking, investing in digital literacy, providing parental guidance alongside restrictions.

(Cover Image: AI Generated)

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