In India, age verification in the digital space has become an increasingly discussed policy area as lawmakers, courts, and regulators work to protect children and enforce statutory age limits online while balancing privacy and technological challenges. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (DPDP Act) lays the foundation for age-based safeguards by requiring online platforms to obtain verifiable parental consent before processing the personal data of anyone under eighteen, and by encouraging appropriate age verification mechanisms to support that requirement. Under draft DPDP rules released for consultation in early 2025, platforms are expected to implement systems that can verify a user’s age and the identity of a parent providing consent, and the government has discussed approaches like virtual tokens linked to digital identity infrastructure such as Aadhaar to help meet these obligations. Industry representatives and the IT Ministry have said that India’s digital architecture, including Aadhaar and Digital India systems, gives the country tools to build technical solutions for age checks, although the specifics of how these will work in practice are still being developed and debated.
In the courts, the Supreme Court of India has taken notice of child safety online and directed the government to consider mandatory age verification and a timeline for action in relation to social media use and harmful content, prompting arguments about minimum ages for access and enforceable age checks beyond simple self-declared dates of birth. The Supreme Court has also suggested that Aadhaar-based age verification could be used for access to “obscene” online content as part of broader oversight of digital media.
At the state level, judicial rulings have supported age verification tied to Aadhaar in specific sectors, such as the Madras High Court upholding Tamil Nadu’s online gaming law requiring a two-step Aadhaar check for players of real-money games to ensure age limits and responsible gaming practices are enforced.
Despite these regulatory and judicial signals, enforcement challenges and privacy concerns remain a core part of the discussion. Government officials have asked tech firms and social media platforms to devise practical age verification methods under the DPDP Act, acknowledging that prior methods like Aadhaar or Digilocker checks were not fully effective. Advocates for stronger safeguards, including the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, have recommended adopting KYC-style identity verification processes to ensure accurate age checks.
In the broader digital ecosystem, some platforms are independently deploying their own age estimation and verification tools to deter underage use of services, and tech giants continue to debate appropriate age verification standards that balance child safety with user privacy. The combination of new data protection law requirements, court directives, industry proposals, and ongoing public debate shows a complex and evolving landscape for age verification in India, with policy work still underway to define effective, privacy-respecting systems for the digital age.