88% parents favour forcing apps to shut child accounts with falsified age

A majority of parents surveyed favour a mandate for apps to shut down accounts of children opened by age misrepresentation or seek parental guidance for the continuation of the same, online survey firm LocalCircles said on Wednesday.

The Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 mandates online platforms to verify the age of children and seek explicit parental consent before processing their data.

The survey report said that some parents believe that many children have falsely represented their age when signing up on the platforms, and with no checks and balances existing on most platforms, they were able to sign up and use such platforms.

"88 per cent 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.

Out of 21,760 parent respondents, only 4 per cent favoured continued usage of the platforms without age verification.

Out of 22,518 respondents, 58 per cent of parents favoured that internet 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 over 44,000 responses from parents of school children located in over 349 districts of the country. There was a difference in the number of responses to each question asked in the survey.