Parents do not have the right to compromise their children’s privacy by exposing them to social media publicity for popularity or money, Minister of Women and Child Affairs Saroja Savithri Paulraj has said — and children placed at significant risk by their parents’ use of the platforms could be classified as vulnerable children, with protective guardianship becoming necessary.
The Minister said parents cannot decide on their children’s behalf whether they should become social media personalities, the Daily Mirror reported on Tuesday. Such a decision, she said, should be made only when a person reaches adulthood and has the mental maturity to make an informed choice.
She said adults were increasingly involving children in dangerous activities and inappropriate content to attract attention online and generate income. Some children, according to the Minister, are being exposed to hazardous environments, encouraged to use obscene language, and involved in adult-oriented or sexualised content.
Children’s safety, privacy and well-being must take priority over online fame and financial gain, she said.
An escalation from the September warning
The ministry warned parents in September against posting photographs and videos of children, citing platform monetisation and the risk of images being reworked by artificial intelligence into explicit material. That statement was an appeal to households.
Tuesday’s statement goes further in two ways. It frames the question as one of rights — asserting that parental authority does not extend to consenting to a child’s online exposure — and it raises the prospect of state intervention in guardianship where a parent’s conduct puts a child at risk. The September warning proposed no such consequence.
The underlying policy question is not new. In May a ministry-linked committee recommended barring under-12s from social media and under-5s from screens.
Not reported
The filing does not say where or when the Minister spoke, or whether the remarks were made at an event, in Parliament or in a written statement. It names no legal provision under which a child would be classified as vulnerable, does not say which authority would make that determination, and gives no detail on what protective guardianship would involve or who would exercise it. No case, complaint or enforcement action is cited, and no figures are given for how many children the ministry believes are affected.
Ada Derana also reported on government plans for new laws on children and social media the same day, but its site has been returning CloudFront errors to this desk for several weeks and the report could not be fetched or date-verified, so it is not cited. A search of other verified newsrooms found no independent report of these remarks, so this article rests on the Daily Mirror alone.