New Delhi, February 10 Experts on Tuesday highlighted the need for coordinated efforts among the government, schools, and tech companies to ensure children's online safety, as they pointed to a lack of data, inadequate training for teachers on digital media, and poor digital literacy among parents as major challenges.
At a panel discussion during the Internet Safety Summit in Delhi, policymakers said that the central education board is working on developing digital safety content for middle school students and rolling out training modules for teachers.
However, they said that there is a major gap in understanding how many children are active online due to the lack of data.
Emphasizing the need for tech companies to share anonymized usage statistics, Himanshu Gupta, Secretary, Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), said, "There are millions of students across the country. We don't know how many students are active on digital media platforms. Each platform collects data, but there's no unified framework to compare or consolidate it."
He added that the CBSE is focusing on digital media safety content for students from classes six to eight and creating annual awareness calendars for parents.
"Teachers are the ones working at the ground level. They, too, become victims of online fraud and misinformation. We are also in the process of giving them digital safety training," Gupta shared.
Speaking at the event, Vikash Chourasia, staff officer to the Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, said that the growing exposure of minors online and a surge in unregulated content have made it imperative to strengthen child protection systems.
"There is an urgent need for data-driven platforms and awareness programmes, because, in general, there is very little understanding of how content actually works and how apps are technically designed or driven. This becomes even more complex across different social media platforms, especially so-called encrypted one-to-one apps," he said.
Highlighting that content itself is a major challenge, as there is often no regulation, Chourasia added that most of the damage occurs through unchecked content. Panelists also discussed the generational disconnect between parents and children regarding online safety.
"Parents see the internet as a threat, whereas students see it as identity and expression. The real safety challenge today is emotional – body image, identity, peer validation," said Sameer Arora, Principal of Shiv Nadar School.
Another panelist said that parents must lead by example in practicing responsible digital habits. "If parents don't follow safe technology habits, schools cannot fix it. The ecosystem must start with adults," said Vishnu Karthik, co-founder of Kaivalya Learning.
Panelists added that while India's digital education ecosystem is growing rapidly, the absence of reliable data and awareness continues to leave millions of young internet users exposed to risks.