Internet Access Is a Fundamental Right for Children Too, India's Supreme Court Rules

India's Supreme Court has held that access to and use of the internet is a fundamental right for every person, children included, and that a blanket ban on children going online is not a lawful way to keep them safe.

A bench of Justice JB Pardiwala and Justice K Vinod Chandran passed the order on October 15 in Just Rights for Children Alliance and Another v. S. Harish and Others. The case was brought by the non-profit Just Rights for Children Alliance, which said social media firms were still failing to find and remove child sexual exploitation and abuse material, known as CSEAM, more than two years after the court's September 2024 judgment in the same matter.

Safety and freedom are not at odds

The bench grounded the right in Article 21, on life and personal liberty, read with Article 19(1)(a), on freedom of speech and expression. It said children hold the same rights whatever their age, and that to deny them the internet altogether would be as absurd as saying a young child has no conscience worth protecting or no speech worth expressing. The safety of children and their freedom are not at odds, the court said. Children are entitled to both.

The judges called the internet a marketplace of ideas. For many children in remote areas, they noted, it is often the only source of learning and information. The bench built on the court's 2020 ruling in Anuradha Bhasin v. Union of India and its 2025 ruling in Pragya Prasun v. Union of India, which recognised digital access as a fundamental right under Article 21.

A ban punishes the victim, the court said

The bench accepted that the internet is far from safe for children. But keeping a child offline because platforms had failed to remove harmful material would mistake the victim for the problem, it said. The wrongdoers are the people who create, circulate, sell or seek out abuse material, and the intermediaries that fail to take it down.

Any blanket restriction on children's access is, in the court's words, nothing more than unproven measures of proven disproportionality. No jurisdiction, it noted, has shown that such bans make children safer. Bans can also push children toward unregulated sites and require checking every user's age, with the constant collection of sensitive data that involves.

Child mode, not a ban

Rejecting a blanket ban did not mean rejecting safeguards. The court pointed to proportionate steps: stronger parental consent, guidance and oversight, a dedicated child mode for social media accounts, accounts that are private by default, limits on contact and messages from unknown adults, and tighter moderation of advertising and content children can reach. It left the details to the Union government, and said nothing in the order stops the government from blocking children from content that is inherently harmful to them, such as adult content sites.

A national database for abuse material

The order also sets homework for the government and the platforms. The Centre must file an affidavit setting out the technology intermediaries use to detect and remove CSEAM, and must frame guidelines for significant social media intermediaries on hash matching and URL lists. The Centre must create a National Hash and URL List Database for verified abuse material. Material must pass several levels of checking before it is listed, with a final assessment by at least three trained human analysts, and intermediaries must then remove anything matching it at once.

Platforms must show their grievance officers' details clearly and make reporting reachable within two steps, with trained officers taking the final call on complaints. The court asked the Centre to consider heavy fines for failures, tied to how serious and how repeated a default is and to a firm's size and turnover, and said money earned from abuse or banned material sold behind paywalls should be forfeited. It also directed that digital safety and age appropriate sex education join the core school curriculum, drawn up by the NCERT and state councils with expert help. Teachers are to be trained, parents given regular awareness sessions, and victims given free counselling for as long as they need it.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta appeared for the Centre. The government must take implementation steps and file a progress affidavit before the next hearing on December 10.