New rule proposed: Children need parent consent to open social media account

The draft rules proposed for the Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 released by the Centre on Friday (January 3) state that a child will need the consent of an adult in order to open social media accounts. The rules say the adult can be a parent or a guardian.

The government has asked the public to send their suggestions or objections regarding the draft rules by going to mygov.in.

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The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, in a notification, said the draft rules will be taken into consideration after February 18.

‘Consent needs to be verifiable’

The rules say that the consent given to a child for opening social media accounts has to be “verifiable”, and that the processing of personal data of a child or of a person with disability will happen only with the verifiable consent.

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“A data fiduciary shall adopt a appropriate technical and organisational measures to ensure that verifiable consent of the parent is obtained before the processing of any personal data of a child and shall observe due diligence, for checking that the individual identifying herself as the parent is an adult who is identifiable if required in connection with any law for the time being in force in India,” say the draft rules.

Important features of draft rules

- Consumers have the right to ask the reason why their data is being collected.

- Users can demand deletion of their data.

- Companies should be more transparent with personal data.

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- Greater consumer control over data.

- Huge penalty of up to ₹250 crore for data breach.

Some definitions in the rules

An online gaming intermediary is described as any intermediary who enables the users of its computer resource to access one or more online games.

A social media intermediary means an intermediary as defined in the Information Technology Act, 2000 as one who primarily or solely enables online interaction among two or more users and allows them to create, upload, share, disseminate, modify, or access information using her services.

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An e-commerce entity is defined as any person who owns, operates, or manages a digital facility or platform for e-commerce as defined in the Consumer Protection Act, 2019, but does not include a seller offering goods or services for sale on a marketplace e-commerce entity as defined in the said Act.