NEW DELHI: Raising citizens’ right to access and use of internet to the level of fundamental right, Supreme Court has held that even children are entitled to that right and said it does not endorse imposing in the name of safety a blanket ban on children accessing internet. At the same time, it favoured restricting access to content that is inherently harmful to kids.A bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and K V Chandran said that right to access and use of the internet is part of Article 21 (right to life and liberty) and Article 19(1)(a) (freedom of speech and expression). The internet is “priceless” as it provides access to information and education to all in even remote areas, where it is often the only source of learning for many children. Noting that the SC had earlier refrained from expressing a definitive view on whether the right to access the internet is, by itself, a fundamental right, the bench said, “...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.”SC: Internet’s value priceless, efficacy of curbs not provedSC said, “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 freedom of speech worth expressing.”The order was passed on a public interest litigationfiled by NGO ‘Just Rights for Children Alliance’, which highlights continued lapses by intermediaries in tackling child sexual exploitation and abuse material (CSEAM) despite SC’s 2024 judgment in this regard.
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Agreeing with its plea, SC said there has been “no progress worth the name” in the last two years.Acknowledging that there has been “a growing yet short-lived tendency across the globe in the recent past to limit the access of children below a certain age to the internet, more particularly to social media platforms,” SC said, “we too gave this our anxious consideration, and only thereafter, we decided consciously not to endorse the same”.It said the efficacy of such restrictive measures remains far from established in countries which have imposed them.“… Children do not cease to use the internet merely because the law prohibits them from doing so … They move to other platforms and websites that are unregulated and even more unsafe,” SC said.“All that we are trying to say is that any blanket restriction on access to 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,” it said.It said some age-based restrictions and safeguards should exist for the safety of children online.