The Supreme Court affirmed children's internet rights and ordered a national CSEAM database. The ruling favours proportionate online safeguards over blanket age-based restrictions.
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Newdelhi,Oct 17, 2026 18:38 IST
The Supreme Court has declared access to and use of the internet a fundamental right of children and directed the Centre to create a national database to detect and remove sexually explicit visual content depicting minors from digital platforms, news agency Press Trust of India reported.
The court issued the order while hearing a petition highlighting an alarming increase in child sexual exploitation and abuse material, or CSEAM, circulating on social media platforms. It also issued several directions aimed at curbing the rise of such content on social media and other online platforms.
A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and K Vinod Chandran said the internet was the marketplace of ideas, creative expression and information. Its value lay not only in the information it contained but also in the access it provided to adults and children, the bench said.
“In view of the foregoing, we have no hesitation in saying that the right to access and use the internet is a fundamental right of every individual under Article 21 read with Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution. Our children, irrespective of their age, enjoy the same rights, and to deny the same altogether would be as absurd as saying children below a certain age do not have a conscience worth protecting or a freedom of speech worth expressing,” the court said in its 137-page order passed on October 15.
According to PTI, the order came on a petition filed by the NGO Just Rights for Children Alliance, which works in the areas of child sexual exploitation, child trafficking and child marriage. Senior advocate HS Phoolka represented the organisation.
The court said its observations did not mean that age-based restrictions should be ruled out. “We acknowledge that some form of safeguards are necessary for the safety of our children online and the moderation of the content accessible at their fingertips,” it said.
The bench suggested a system that gives greater importance to parental consent, guidance and oversight when children access social media platforms. It also suggested a dedicated “child mode” for such accounts, with measures proportionate to the objective of ensuring children's safety.
The court clarified that its observations would not prevent the Union government from restricting children's access to specific categories of content or services that are inherently harmful to them, including adult content websites.
It said children's safety and freedom were not in conflict and that they were entitled to both. “For many children, particularly in remote areas, it is often the only source of learning and information. Likewise for children with special needs, the internet is often the only place where they are able to find company in others like them,” the court said.
The bench said the right to freedom of speech and expression under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution had never been limited to the right to speak. It had always been interpreted as including the right to know and to receive and share information and ideas.
The court cautioned that the methods used to enforce age-based restrictions could themselves go too far. “Such processes, inevitably, always require identifying and ascertaining the age of each and every user, continuous collection and monitoring of sensitive data and an overall disproportionate risk of misuse and surveillance, the kind which finds no place within the right to privacy of our people,” it said.
The bench said the experience of other jurisdictions that had introduced such restrictions showed that their effectiveness remained far from established. Children did not stop using the internet merely because the law prohibited them from doing so, it said. Instead, they could continue using it without the knowledge of their parents or authorities and move to unregulated and potentially more unsafe platforms and websites.
“Such restrictions also make children who are being enticed or threatened on the internet reluctant to report the same to parents, guardians and trusted adults out of fear of reprisal for using the internet. This would significantly undermine the safety of our children, who are already apprehensive about confiding such incidents, even without such restrictions, and defeat the avowed object of the POCSO Act,” the court said.
The bench said keeping children away from social media platforms would not reduce incidents such as those mentioned in the news report placed before it. “Without proper safeguards and earnest efforts by all stakeholders in the detection and removal of CSEAM, such material will continue to circulate and embolden those who seek out the same,” it said.
Ruling out a complete internet ban for children, the bench said, “All that we are trying to say is that any blanket restriction on the access to the internet by children is nothing more than unproven measures of proven disproportionality. No jurisdiction has, so far, been able to demonstrate that children are any safer on account of such measures.”
The court said the effectiveness of blanket restrictions was contested and that such measures could not replace the efforts required from all stakeholders, including online platforms, law enforcement agencies, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and the courts.
In its order, the Supreme Court reaffirmed children's fundamental right to access and use the internet while allowing proportionate safeguards against harmful content. It also directed the Centre to establish a national database to help detect and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse material from digital platforms.
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