As the digital landscape grows more complex, children are increasingly engaging with online tools for learning, gaming, and social connection. With that engagement comes real risk: exposure to harmful content, online grooming, algorithmic manipulation, and addictive design patterns. Laws like India’s Digital Personal Data Protection Act (DPDP Act) attempt to address these harms by mandating age verification and parental consent for children under 18. While well-intentioned, these mechanisms are technologically and socially flawed, leaving children, parents, and platforms in a difficult bind. As someone who has spent years bridging governance, risk management, and digital safety, I’ve seen the limitations of these frameworks firsthand. The problem is clear: relying on age verification and parental consent shifts responsibility to families who may lack awareness, access, or technical literacy, while failing to meaningfully protect children online. This is where RoseShield—our child safety platform—provides a scalable, privacy-conscious solution.

Why Parental Consent and Age Verification Fall Short

1. Age verification is neither accurate nor inclusive

Children can easily misrepresent their age, borrow a sibling’s identity, or use parental assistance to bypass age gates. Meanwhile, asking parents to verify identity assumes they have the technical knowledge, digital literacy, and awareness of online risks. In India, where only 38% of households are digitally literate, this assumption often fails.

Even government ID-based verification raises risks: many families share devices, and requiring hard identifiers like Aadhaar or DigiLocker tokens can expose sensitive personal data to misuse or breaches. Additionally, these measures can unintentionally exclude children or parents without access to government-issued IDs, disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations.

2. Parental consent alone cannot prevent harm

Parental consent assumes parents can fully oversee their child’s online activity. In reality, children often introduce parents to digital platforms, making supervision inconsistent at best. Overreliance on consent places the burden on families rather than on platforms to embed safety into their services. It also risks turning supervision into surveillance, with disproportionate impacts on girls and marginalized groups.

3. Implementation ambiguity creates risk

The DPDP Draft Rules leave critical questions unanswered:

1. How should businesses verify age without compromising privacy?
2. How can parental relationships be confirmed without collecting sensitive data?
3. What counts as “appropriate technical and organizational measures” to obtain consent?

Without clear guidance, businesses may adopt ineffective, invasive, or inconsistent measures—essentially reducing protection to a “box-ticking” exercise.

How RoseShield Solve the Problem

RoseShield was built to eliminate the need for intrusive age verification and parental consent, while proactively safeguarding children.

1. Safety without collecting identity data

RoseShield focuses on behavior, context, and interaction patterns, not hard identifiers. This allows platforms to identify and mitigate:

1. grooming attempts
2. predatory behavior
3. exposure to harmful content
4. manipulative or addictive algorithms

Because it doesn’t rely on IDs or parental verification, RoseShield protects children without compromising privacy or excluding families without government documentation.

2. Proactive protection replaces reactive consent

Rather than shifting responsibility to parents, RoseShield provides real-time risk detection and mitigation. Platforms can intervene in harmful interactions, moderate unsafe content, and prevent exposure to risky patterns—automatically and safely. This approach aligns with emerging regulatory frameworks in India, the EU, and beyond, where the goal is safety-by-design, not bureaucratic hurdles.

3. Evidence and accountability built in

RoseShield generates audit-ready reports that show platforms are actively protecting children. Regulators, parents, and stakeholders can see that safety measures are implemented consistently, without storing sensitive personal data or compromising anonymity.

The Future of Child Online Safety Requires Technology, Not Just Consent

The challenges of age verification and parental consent are global. They fail to protect children effectively, introduce privacy and equity risks, and place undue burden on families. Regulation alone is not enough.

RoseShield bridges the gap between law and implementation. It ensures that children are protected in real time, without invasive checks or reliance on consent mechanisms that often fail in practice.

If we want children to explore, learn, and express themselves safely online—whether on gaming platforms, social media, or emerging AI tools—we need solutions that integrate safety by design, preserve autonomy, and respect privacy. RoseShield does exactly that. The internet can be a safe space for children—but only if the technology works as hard as the law intends.