BENGALURU: At a Bengaluru panel on children’s online safety, police officers, child-rights advocates and legal experts described a surge in cases where minors are drawn into cybercrimes sometimes as victims, sometimes as accused amid a regulatory vacuum and a widening gap in digital awareness at home and in schools.
A Growing Digital Vulnerability
At a panel discussion titled The Circle of Safety, organised by Parihar of the Bengaluru City Police on November 25, an inspector from the Karnataka State Police delivered a stark assessment: children are now implicated either as victims or as accused in at least three out of every 3,000 cybercrime cases registered monthly in the state.
Shivarathna S., Inspector of Cyber Crime at the Karnataka State Police Training School in Channapatna, said the pattern has grown more visible as case volumes rise.
“In a month when we register 3,000 cases of cybercrime, it involves at least three children either as victims or accused,” she said.
The numbers, though small in proportion, are significant because they represent the intersection of expanding online access and a narrowing window of oversight.
Online Risks Outpacing Regulation
Panelists noted that social media has become the primary site where minors encounter these risks, often without understanding the legal or personal consequences. Advocate Rathna, drawing from recent cases she has handled, described a rise in incidents involving cyberbullying, cyberstalking, morphing of images especially those of female students sharing pornographic content, and children becoming targets in cyber tipline complaints.
She warned that regulatory gaps make it easy for minors to slip through age restrictions on platforms, creating accounts with false birth dates and navigating spaces designed without meaningful safety protocols.
“Since social media platforms are money-making mediums, there are no restrictions on data sharing, including pictures across the globe,” she said.
This environment, she added, leaves children exposed to exploitation and unaware that sharing certain content may constitute a criminal offence. Rathna argued that parents and teachers must bridge the knowledge gap:
“There is a need to help them understand not to share private photos or data on the internet, keeping the profile private by making changes in the settings. The legal framework is too complicated to take down vulgar videos or photos of an individual once they become viral.”
The Absence of Digital Literacy
Other panelists emphasized that neither restricting phone usage nor prohibiting social media participation is a sufficient safeguard. Instead, they argued for systemic awareness-building. Child-rights activist Nagasimha Rao said teachers must cultivate a “sense of ownership” among students, so they understand how their online actions shape their safety and social environment. Only then, he argued, can schools effectively address issues such as cyberbullying or corporal punishment.
Experts pointed to a broader institutional gap: unlike campaigns around sugar consumption or health awareness, there is little focus within school boards or state curricula on digital safety, the IT Act, the Juvenile Justice Act 2015, or the POCSO Act 2012. Without such educational scaffolding, they said, children often become accidental participants in cyber offences, unable to recognize the boundaries between online expression and legal liability.
Parenting, Law, and the Culture Children Inherit
Legal experts Byatha N. Jagadeesha and Geetha Mala T. R., a member of the Bengaluru Urban Child Welfare Committee, stressed the influence of parental behavior on children’s online decisions.
“It is important for parents to follow the laws so that children also imitate them and remain disciplined,” Jagadeesha said.
Panelists said both the home and school environments send signals about acceptable behavior. In homes where adults share personal data freely or treat online risks casually, children tend to mirror those practices. In schools where digital literacy remains an afterthought, students resort to self-guided exploration shaped largely by peer pressure and platform algorithms.
The combination, they noted, is producing a generation that is more digitally connected than any before it—but often without the foundational knowledge needed to navigate the consequences of that connection.
As cybercrime caseload continues to rise, the voices at the panel suggested that the question is no longer whether children will encounter digital risk but whether state institutions, parents, and educators can adapt quickly enough to protect them without limiting their access to the online world that increasingly defines their social lives.
