While digital access enables learning, creativity, and connection, it also exposes children to exploitation, harmful content, and psychological risk. These risks extend beyond criminalized harms. This IGAP study charts a coordinated path for child safety and also highlights emerging harms which affect the largest number of children, but receive the least systematic response.
Author: Soumya AK and Ananya Agrawal
A scene from Netflix’s acclaimed series Adolescence captures a chilling truth about what it means to grow up online. A group of teenagers exchange what seems like harmless banter, yet the language is coded – insults are disguised as compliments, manipulation is embedded in memes, and cruelty hides behind irony. Within this altered linguistic landscape, harm travels unnoticed, until it surfaces offline as bullying, exclusion, or violence.
This blurred boundary between the digital and the physical defines modern adolescence. As technology becomes inseparable from education, entertainment, and social life, young users navigate a landscape filled with both opportunity and risk. According to UN estimates (2023), around 77 percent of people aged between 15 and 24 used the Internet, with many engaging with digital devices from their earliest years. In India, this digital transformation has been particularly rapid. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India estimates 989 million active internet users,4 including a substantial and growing number of adolescents and school-aged children. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this shift, as classrooms moved online and millions of children received their first devices for remote learning.
Born Connected: Keeping Childhood Safe in a Digital India
Author: Soumya AK and Ananya Agrawal
A scene from Netflix’s acclaimed series Adolescence captures a chilling truth about what it means to grow up online. A group of teenagers exchange what seems like harmless banter, yet the language is coded – insults are disguised as compliments, manipulation is embedded in memes, and cruelty hides behind irony. Within this altered linguistic landscape, harm travels unnoticed, until it surfaces offline as bullying, exclusion, or violence.
This blurred boundary between the digital and the physical defines modern adolescence. As technology becomes inseparable from education, entertainment, and social life, young users navigate a landscape filled with both opportunity and risk. According to UN estimates (2023), around 77 percent of people aged between 15 and 24 used the Internet, with many engaging with digital devices from their earliest years. In India, this digital transformation has been particularly rapid. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India estimates 989 million active internet users,4 including a substantial and growing number of adolescents and school-aged children. The COVID-19 pandemic further accelerated this shift, as classrooms moved online and millions of children received their first devices for remote learning.
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