88% parents want age verification mandate for kids on online platforms: Survey

Most of the parents in India favour a mandate for applications to shut down accounts of children opened by age misrepresentation or seek parental guidance for continuation, a survey conducted by LocalCircles revealed on Wednesday.

Online platforms are required to verify the age of children and demand explicit parental consent before processing their data as per the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023.

"88% of parents surveyed in favour of DPDP rules mandating that platforms (social media, OTT, online gaming, etc.) identify any minor accounts with age misrepresented and proactively either seek parental consent or shut such accounts," the survey said.

Some of the parents who were surveyed believe that many children falsely represent their age when signing up on online platforms. As most of these platforms don’t have any measure to verify the age, children were able to sign up and use these platforms without parental consent.

From a total of 21,760 parent respondents, only 4% were in favour of letting children use these platforms without age verification. Moreover, out of 22,518 respondents, 58% of parents favoured that online platforms should rely on content type consumed, uploaded, profile information, images, etc. for age identification.

The survey, conducted between December 27 and February 23, claims to have received more than 44,000 responses from parents of school-going children, living in over 349 districts across the country. Notably, there was a difference in the number of responses to each question asked in the survey.