In Their Best Interests: A Review of the Legal Framework on Children’s Digital Safety in India
This report examines how Indian laws address digital harms to children and proposes principles to inform the development of children’s digital safety frameworks, including regulatory and industry-led approaches.
Children in India, and across the world, are becoming digital natives. The digital world is not a demarcated space that they ‘enter’ and ‘exist in’, but rather a condition of their lives. Recent reportage has flagged serious concerns about the safety of children in digital spaces. This has triggered responses from across the three branches of government in India.
Against this backdrop, this report reviews India’s legal framework on children’s digital safety and contributes to the emerging discourse on protecting children from harms occurring in digital spaces.
The report identifies the different touchpoints between children and digital technology, and the harms that are reported to arise in this context. The analysis of Indian laws covers thirty-four provisions across ten statutes and their subordinate legislations, mapped against fourteen harms. It also examines reforms in comparable jurisdictions that have responded to systemic risks borne out of digital environments for children primarily through ex ante regulation of digital ecosystems. The analysis reveals that India’s existing legal framework remains largely reactive and fragmented, with limited attention to children’s evolving capacities, systemic risks in digital environments, and newer or sustained forms of digital harm.
The report closes with seven principles that may inform legislative, regulatory, policy and industry self-regulatory interventions towards digital safety of children. These principles call for placing children’s rights and best interests at the centre of digital safety, as well as proportionate and developmentally appropriate interventions, safety-by-design, shared but differentiated responsibility and adaptive governance.
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About the Authors
Supriya is a Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Law and Technology Research at Vidhi. She is drawn to technology law for the intellectual challenge it offers, and her experience in the field spans antitrust, AI, digital public infrastructure, e-commerce, intermediary regulation, and data protection. Previously, she was a Policy Analyst at The Quantum Hub, where she worked on client consulting and independent research projects. She was also awarded a fellowship by Meta to conduct research on the interface between data privacy and antitrust laws, and read for the B.A. LL.B. (Hons.) at National Law University, Delhi.
Kahaan is a Senior Resident Fellow in the Applied Law and Technology Research Team at Vidhi. His experience in the technology law and policy space is diverse, spanning academia, strategic litigation, and advocacy. Previously, he has worked at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington D.C.), the Software Freedom Law Center, India (SFLC.in), and at the Daksha Fellowship. His work has focused on areas such as internet shutdowns, technological due process, digital free speech, privacy, and AI governance. He has worked on reports on different subjects at the intersection of law and technology commissioned by the United Kingdom Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (UK FCDO), the European Commission (EC), among others. His work often incorporates an interdisciplinary perspective, specifically from the fields of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), system design principles, and philosophy of technology. He graduated from Symbiosis Law School, Pune in 2021 with an LL.B., and secured his LL.M. in Technology Law and Policy from the Georgetown University Law Center, Washington D.C. in 2024.
Shehnaz leads the Applied Law and Technology Research (ALTR) at Vidhi, where she specialises in technology law and policy. At Vidhi, she has worked with several Government Ministries/ Departments and regulators on matters relating to digital public infrastructure, data protection, artificial intelligence, and fintech. Her work at Vidhi focuses on developing legal and policy solutions to ensure that innovation serves society equitably and responsibly. Before joining Vidhi, she also worked with the Financial Regulatory Practice at Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas.
Nirmalya Chaudhuri graduated with a BA LLB (Hons.) degree from the West Bengal National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) in 2023. Subsequently, he earned his LLM degree from the University of Cambridge in 2024, on a fully-funded Cambridge Trust scholarship. His articles and blog posts have been published in the Indian Journal of Constitutional Law, De Lege Ferenda (the undergraduate supplementary journal to the Cambridge Law Review), the Oxford Human Rights Hub Blog, the Berkeley Journal of International Law Blog, among others. His interests lie in the realm of privacy and data protection, and the broader constitutional and regulatory issues that they raise, especially in light of emerging technology. When not thinking or writing about the law, he enjoys reading classical novels, with a preference for dystopian fiction.
Rudraksh Lakra was a Research Fellow with the Applied Law and Technology Research team at Vidhi. His interests lie at the intersection of technology law, human rights, constitutional law, international law, political economy, and post-colonial studies. Rudraksh previously worked at IT for Change and Ikigai Law, focusing on issues such as DPI, AI governance, cybersecurity, telecom regulation, data protection, and cloud computing. He graduated in 2023 with a B.A., LL.B. (Hons.) degree from O.P. Jindal Global Law School.