Experts identified that the worldwide norms for age of consent is 16 and are arguing {that a} vital a part of the inhabitants must undergo many hoops to get Internet entry. They argued that the poor’s entry to movies, entry to expertise and entry to platform info will get impacted additional rising the digital divide for them.
Industry sources mentioned quite than limiting teenagers’ web utilization, the main focus needs to be on persevering with to develop age-appropriate content material, privateness and security protections, and schooling for teenagers and oldsters about their rights and obligations on-line.
“Requiring parental consent for teens to access online services is not an effective or practical solution to ensure meaningful protections for teens online. In a country like India, children are “digital native” and are key to bringing their households and oldsters on-line, and age-gating will decelerate Internet adoption in a rustic have been so many are nonetheless offline,” an official with a expertise agency who didn’t want to be named mentioned.
Some sectors like edtech and gaming are significantly affected as a result of they’re being compelled unreasonably to take specific consent, sources mentioned. Cross-stakeholder collaboration involving these totally different sectors will likely be key to arriving at a rational framework, they mentioned.
Cyber knowledgeable Prasanto Okay Roy instructed ET dad and mom might not all the time be capable to give knowledgeable consent as they don’t perceive what they’re giving consent to. These embody dad and mom of youngsters from decrease socio-economic backgrounds, he mentioned.
Discover the tales of your curiosity
“They may not be very literate or have no idea what they’re giving consent to. Often, a consent message on a parent’s mobile may be read and acted upon by the more literate child. So, this current blanket rule of keeping the age of consent at 18 is over simplistic,” he said.It may have to be graded, perhaps for children below 13, and for children aged 13 to 18, he said. If teenagers are sometimes tried as adults for serious crimes, equally, we mustn’t deprive senior teens of agency while protecting them, he pointed out.
Anyone below the age of 18 has been defined as “children” in the upcoming Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Bill, which is likely to be now introduced in the Parliament in the Monsoon session.
Companies will be required to obtain explicit parental consent before processing any data belonging to this user group.
ET had reported in February that the government will “assessment” this definition one yr after enactment of the Act arguing that whereas dad and mom need the age to be stored at 18, kids and different stakeholders need it lowered. While the age cut-off will likely be 18, it might be lowered to possibly 16 a yr after the (DPDP) Bill is in place.
Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com