Courts can’t regulate children’s mobile addiction: Madras HC

CHENNAI: There is no doubt children are addicted to online games and mobiles, but courts cannot order regulation of suchissueson thebasis of the personal sense of morality of a petitioner or judges, the Madras high court said.
“Itis notfor thecourttoimpose restrictions,” said the first bench of Chief Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Senthilkumar Ramamoorthy. The bench, however, added that the court could step in if the Executive fails to act on any representation made in this regard.
The court made the observations on Thursday on a public interest writ petition filed by E Martin Jayakumar, represented by advocate Selvi George, to direct the Union government to regulate online gaming detrimental to children and young adults.
“There is no doubt that children and young adults these days are addicted to their phones and their worlds appearto revolve aroundtheir mobile phones. Often times, a family could be together and sitting atatablebuteach member using the phone, even if to describe the dish that (they) maybehavingor the quality of food at the moment,” the bench said.
However, even constitutional courts should be slow in entering into such areas and dealing with such matters on the personalsenseof morality of the individual complainant or of the judge or judges concerned, the court asserted.
Noting that there is no doubt that when there is some illegal action or something which is detrimental to larger public interest, constitutional courts intervene, the judges said, “Butin the mattersof the present kind, especially when elected governments are in place, such matters of policy should be left to the wisdom of those representing the people and having their mandate instead of the court issuing a diktat.”
Itisonly upon thefailureof theExecutiveto act and,thereupon, the court perceiving the matter to be a danger to society, that the court ought to step in, they said.
The court added, “At least at the initial stage, the duty of the court is to direct the complainants to the Executive for a more wholesome and studied policy decision to be taken by the Executive than what may be possible before any court.”
Before parting, the court said the intricacies of the menace that the petitioner complained of and the larger or long-timeeffectsthatonline games had on children and young adults had not been gone into in any great detail in the present proceedings, particularly in the absence of any scientific material.
Out of abundant caution, the judges then made it clear that nothing in the order would prevent further complaints on the issue being brought to the court, if the Executive failed to take appropriate action.