Can a minor enter into a contract under Indian law? Or, to put it more directly, can a 13-year-old enter into a contract with a digital or social media platform by simply clicking “I agree”?
This was the question before the Supreme Court bench headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, with Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V Mohana, on September 10, 2026, when it issued notice to the centre and sought its response on the safeguards required to protect children using social media and other digital platforms.
The petitioner, Just Rights for Children Alliance, through a PIL sought safeguards, including “firewalls”, to protect children below 18 from online exploitation and other risks associated with social media and digital platforms. Its plea raises a fundamental legal contradiction: if a minor is not competent to independently enter into a binding contract under Indian law, how can the same child independently create an account on a digital platform whose terms and conditions govern the relationship? The petition, among other measures, also sought parental or guardian consent and appropriate mechanisms to verify that consent.
In 2022, India recorded 1,823 cyber crimes against children below 18, according to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data. Of these, 158 cases were classified as cyber stalking or bullying, 74 as cyber blackmailing, threatening or harassment, and 1,171 involved cyber pornography or hosting or publishing obscene sexual material depicting children. In 2023, the number of registered cyber crimes against children rose to 1,902.
These figures provide only the registered crimes, and not every instance of online harm faced by children. Yet, they point to a growing vulnerability at a time when children use digital platforms not merely for entertainment, but also for education, research, skilling, examination preparation, career opportunities, communication and civic participation.
ANOMALY IN INDIAN LAWS
When social networking took off in India in the late 2000s, there was no dedicated Indian statutory framework prescribing a uniform minimum age for opening a social media account. The Information Technology Act, 2000, was already in force, and the Information Technology (Intermediaries Guidelines) Rules, 2011, subsequently prescribed due-diligence obligations for intermediaries and required platforms to publish rules governing users’ access to their services. The rules also prohibited users from uploading material that could “harm minors in any way”.
But there was no equivalent rule saying that a person below 18 could not independently create a social media account.
The global platforms, meanwhile, developed their own age thresholds allowing 13 as the minimum age for opening an account, subject to the law of the country concerned. And that is where the Indian anomaly becomes striking.
Under Section 11 of the Indian Contract Act, 1872, a person is competent to contract only if he or she has attained the age of majority, is of sound mind and is not otherwise disqualified by law. Indian contract law has traditionally treated an agreement entered into by a minor as void. The principle goes back to the landmark decision in Mohori Bibee vs Dharmodas Ghose (1903) and continues to form part of Indian contract jurisprudence.
So, in the physical world, Indian law says that a child below 18 lacks contractual capacity. On the internet, however, the same child may be invited to enter into a relationship with a platform governed by terms of service simply by declaring a date of birth and clicking “accept”.
WHAT EXACTLY IS THE “CONTRACT”?
When a person creates an account, the platform’s terms of service ordinarily govern what the user can do, what the platform can do, what content may be uploaded, how an account can be suspended, how disputes are handled and, increasingly, how personal information and user-generated data are processed.
The petitioner has, therefore, argued that a minor below 18 cannot independently enter into such a contractual arrangement. It has sought directions to the centre to inform digital platforms, including social media intermediaries, that contracts entered into by children below 18 are void ab initio and to suspend steps taken in furtherance of such contracts.
It has also sought insertion of a specific provision in the Information Technology Rules, 2021, or appropriate guidelines, to ensure that minors do not enter into such agreements without the consent of a parent or lawful guardian, with the identity and authority of the parent or guardian verified through e-KYC or another legally recognised mechanism.
But declaring the contract void would not, by itself, resolve every problem. If a child has already created an account, shared photographs, communicated with strangers and generated years of personal data, what happens to that data? If the child has been groomed or sexually exploited through the platform, does contractual invalidity provide any immediate protection? And if a platform requires users to be at least 13, but age verification consists essentially of entering a date of birth, who bears responsibility when a 12-year-old simply enters “13”?
The problem, therefore, is larger than contract law. It is about whether platforms should be permitted to place the burden of protecting children upon the children themselves.
COST OF THE GAP
The NCRB figures do not establish that every cybercrime involving a child is a social media crime. They encompass cyber blackmailing and harassment, fake profiles, cyber pornography, stalking or bullying and other offences.
But the broader vulnerability is difficult to ignore. A child’s digital footprint can expose far more than a telephone number. Photographs, school information, location, interests, friendships and patterns of behaviour can all become available through online interaction. The risks range from bullying and harassment to grooming, sexual exploitation, blackmail and the circulation of child sexual abuse material.
The petition specifically points to risks including online grooming, sexual exploitation, digital trafficking, sextortion, behavioural profiling, misuse of personal data, cyberbullying and exposure to age-inappropriate content.
The question before the Court is, therefore, not simply whether children should have access to technology. It is whether the architecture through which children access technology is safe enough for children to use independently.
WHY THE SUPREME COURT’S INTERVENTION MATTERS
For years, online safety has often been framed as a question of parental supervision: parents should monitor accounts, teach children cyber hygiene and intervene when something goes wrong.
The PIL asks whether that burden can continue to rest principally on families when platforms themselves possess the technology, data and resources to identify and restrict underage users.
The petition does not seek to exclude children from the digital ecosystem. It recognises the important role digital platforms play in education, research, skilling, examination preparation, career opportunities and civic participation. Instead, it advocates a “prevention by design” approach, under which foreseeable risks to children are addressed while digital services are designed and provided, rather than relying only on detection, reporting, removal of harmful content or prosecution after harm occurs.
The Supreme Court’s September 10 proceedings have now brought this question squarely into the legal and regulatory domain. The bench has sought the centre’s response and flagged the need for safeguards for children on digital platforms.
This also intersects with India’s evolving data protection framework. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, defines a child as a person below 18 and provides for verifiable parental consent before processing a child’s personal data.
That raises further questions: should there be verified age assurance before an account can be created? Should parental consent be mandatory? Should platforms have to demonstrate that they took reasonable steps to establish a user’s age? And should responsibility for failures rest primarily with the platform rather than the child?
Age verification, however, can itself become a privacy problem. If every user must prove age through identity documents or biometric information, a system designed to protect children could create another pool of sensitive personal data.
HOW OTHER COUNTRIES HAVE DEALT WITH THIS
India is also watching an experiment already under way elsewhere. Australia’s social media minimum age regime came into effect on December 10, 2025. Age-restricted platforms are required to take reasonable steps to prevent Australians under 16 from having accounts. Importantly, the Australian model does not punish the child or the child’s parents or carers. Potential penalties fall on platforms that fail to take reasonable steps, with penalties of up to A$54.6 million.
France has adopted a different approach, with a digital-majority framework around 15 and parental authorisation for younger users. The European Union’s GDPR also provides a parental-consent framework for processing children’s personal data, with 16 as the default age that member states can lower to no less than 13.
NOTHING NEW FOR SUPREME COURT
The present PIL is not the Supreme Court’s first encounter with children and digital exploitation. In Just Rights for Children Alliance vs S Harish, decided in September 2024, the apex court examined child sexual abuse material in the digital environment and the application of the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012, to the online circulation and possession of such material.
That judgment demonstrated how digital technology has altered the scale and manner of child sexual exploitation. The present proceedings take the question one step earlier: instead of asking what the law should do after a child has been harmed, they ask whether the legal system can prevent children from entering potentially unsafe digital environments without adequate safeguards.
The real question, therefore, is not whether children belong online. It is who must protect them, at what point, and through what mechanism.
The Supreme Court has now put that question before the government i.e whether clicking “I agree” is enough or whether a child should be left to bear the consequences of a digital contract that Indian law says the child was never competent to make.
—The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, lawyer and trained mediator
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