Children under 18 will require parental consent for accessing social media

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act was passed in the Parliament on August 2023

The draft rules of the Digital Personal Data Protection Act reaffirm that children under 18 will require the verifiable consent of parents or guardians before accessing social media platforms.

To be clear, the DPDP Act, which was passed in Parliament in August 2023, laid down this provision. However, the Act did not specify how the verification was to be done.

The draft rules, which are open for public consultation until February 18, require a child's age to be verified against a government-mandated ID or a token verified and made available by a Digital Locker service provider.

An illustration provided in the DPDP Rules on the processing of children's data goes like this: If a child (C) wants to create a user account, the Data Fiduciary (DF) must verify parental consent.

In this case, the parent (P) identifies herself and confirms she is a registered user with verified identity and age details already available with DF. Before processing the child’s data, DF must confirm the reliability of the parent's identity and age records. 

Controversy

The provisions regarding the processing of children's data have been a contentious subject since 2023 with various Big Tech firms such as Meta, Google etc seeking changes in how children are defined in the DPDP Act.

One of the major tasks of the industry including Big Tech companies was to lower the definition of the age of children from meaning those below the age of 18 to those below the age of 14.

These provisions had also evoked concern from members of the civil society and industry alike. They had argued earlier that such imposition of restrictions on processing children's data may curtail innovation.

Silver lining?

However now, in the DPDP Rules, the government has granted exemptions to certain classes of data fiduciaries from these restrictions.

Fiduciaries exempted from restrictions on processing children's data are:

• Mental health establishment or healthcare professional
• Allied healthcare professional
• Educational institution
• Child day care centre
• Educational institution