‘Stricter Laws Needed To Regulate Online Content For Children, Underage Users’
Reena Singh, a working woman & a mother from Lucknow, welcomes the decision of ban OTT platforms streaming pornographic content and calls for stricter laws. Her views:
With so much variety and vulnerability available on the internet and social media, it is a next to impossible task to keep a check on youths especially on growing and teenage children. The government’s decision of banning these 25 OTT platforms is a welcome step but what I think that these were just like a taking out a drop of water from an enormous ocean – No doubt the government, in the recent past, has come up with some new laws and punishment for the offenders but there still remain many loopholes and such content could be easily searched and found on the internet.
The action indeed is justified as it protects a vulnerable section of the society (particularly women and children) as early exposure to such content is a distortion in the understanding of healthy relationships and sexuality. Obscenity is dangerous – it not only erodes the moral values and culture that form the foundation of our society but it is also responsible for the degradation of social norms and values particularly among impressionable youths.
The decision to block these OTT well reflects our determination to ensure that technological progress doesn’t come at the cost of social values and human dignity and it is in tune with the constitutional vision of building a society based on justice, liberty, equality, and fraternity.
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Recently, Australia announced that children below 16 will soon be banned from using social media due to its harmful effects on them – can’t we, at least, take a similar stand – by implementing a data protection law that would mandate parental consent for children under 18 when they join social media, OTT/video, and online gaming platforms?
A recent survey has also revealed that children aged between 9 to 17 years are spending between three to six hours on various social media platforms (or on the mobile at least) with many of them exceeding six hours. The survey also revealed that 66 per cent parents are in favour of a law requiring parental consent to join/view/participate in social media and other platforms on the internet and, or, implementing mandatory parental consent through Aadhar authentication.
Many parents are also in the habit of handing over a mobile phone to their children (at very young age – 3 to 4 years and above) just to prevent them from creating ruckus just to avoid any kind of disturbance to them. Is this, by any justification, fair?
It is high time that we, as parents and as a responsible society, realize the potential adverse consequences of excessive use of social media, OTT, and gaming among children and adolescents. This should be prioritized as an important public health concern with an urgent need to create awareness and invest in prevention-oriented strategies. For this, everyone, parents, governments, societies, schools, colleges, etc., need to come on board to make meaningful change.
As told to Rajat Rai
