Technology as a Double-Edged Weapon: Digital Risks and the Rehabilitation of Juvenile Victims at Observation Homes

Abstract

Children who pass through India’s juvenile justice system rarely arrive with a clean slate. Many carry histories of neglect, coercion or abuse, and a growing share of that harm now leaves a digital trail: a stranger on a gaming chat, a threat to circulate a private photograph, a recruiter on a messaging app. This paper asks how technology ought to be handled inside observation homes, where the same phone that can pull a child back toward exploiters can also carry a school lesson, a counsellor’s voice or a job application. Using a doctrinal and socio-legal method, it reads the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, the POCSO Act, 2012, the Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 against the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and its General Comment No. 25. The argument is that Indian law protects a child’s identity and bodily integrity reasonably well on paper, yet says almost nothing about digital readiness, which is the question institutions face every day. The paper proposes a graduated stewardship model in which a child’s digital needs are assessed at admission, written into the individual care plan, widened step by step, and followed after release. The paper claims no field data and marks the places where empirical work is still needed.