The Government of India has issued instructions to social media sites such as Google, Facebook etc to block links to the Blue Whale game. It is stated that some have implemented it and some have not.
Today social media accounts can be easily opened even by minors who donot have any contractual capacity. Children often donot want their parents to monitor their facebook accounts and donot even allow their parents to be their friends. So monitoring of the children’s social media activities by parents is nor practically possible.
In the early days of Internet yahoo mail had a system where a minor would be required to obtain parental consent before opening an account. Such system is no longer in existence.
Of course, even if such a restriction is imposed, it is possible that some minors may declare himself to be an adult and open an account. But when they post birthday wishes or photographs, it is possible for Facebook to identify.
At the same time FaceBook can tag an account by easily recognizable identifiers that a Facebook page is a “Minor Page” or an “Adult Page” so that some visitors can flag if the classification is inappropriate.
It is also possible for FaceBook to introduce a classification of “Verified” account so that the identity of a person is verified with some KYC document like an Aadhar number so that the possibilities of “Impersonation” is reduced. Facebook may retain the “Pseudonomization” if they want but at least allow a classification where only identified persons interact. The user applications such as mobile apps can then be designed to create a filter to block chatting and other content from unverified accounts to protect children.
Perhaps Government should consider having a dialogue with the social media players to see how the minor accounts can be flagged for monitoring either through their parents or though some NGOs or through filters in different applications.
Naavi
