IOSR Journal Of Humanities And Social Science (IOSR-JHSS) Volume 15, Issue 1 (Sep. - Oct. 2013), PP 16-21 e-ISSN: 2279-0837, p-ISSN: 2279-0845. www.Iosrjournals.Org www.iosrjournals.org 16 | Page Legal Study On The Protection Of Children In Social Network: Special Reference To Indian Law R. Kesavamoorthy 1 1 (Research Scholar, Dr. Ambedkar Government Law College, Pondicherry University, India) Abstract: Now a day cyberspace is the place where children grow and learn, it is the duty of the every regulator to secure the children in the cyberspace. Privacy and security are the great concern while using social networking. Children are worst affected by the ill-practice of social networking. It is need of the hour to look into the legal aspects of the social networking and the child. Protecting the child from the cyber predators is one of the key concerns in India. This article throws light on the offenses committed to the child in the virtual space. It embarks upon various legal aspects related to the child and the use of social networking. This paper meticulously analyzes the lacunae in the legal framework and also brings out the problem solving solutions. Keywords: child, law, privacy, protection, social networking, India I. Introduction Social networking is an online platform that facilitates building of social connections or social relationship among people. Online community is also a social network but it is broader than that of the social networking. While, an online community includes many members like a group, social networking is individual centered. The later allows users to share ideas, activities, events, interests and personal information within their individual network. Having a very long history, it started from the offline communities in the ancient period who met once in every day evening and discussed the issues, express the interests, chatting etc. The potential invention of computer and technologies created a gap among people and given a new platform to meet and chat. It is nothing but gradual growth of older technologies like Usenet and bulletin board services. These technologies only allow the user to communicate with text. For many reasons, this old technology do not fit into the new platform of web based technology. So the new technology has given birth to social networking. So the e-mail and text communication eventually have turned into profiling. The profiling technology improvised by the techies has led to many applications that allow the users to add information like photo, video, files etc. subsequently grouping has emerged. Now the social networking technology improving in many dimensions like geo tagging, tagging, geo social networking, interoperability between the social networks by OpenID and OpenSocial, real time web, location based, live feed, GPS live location etc. India is the third biggest Facebook market which have nearly 4.98 crore users.[1] Semiocast, a social media monitoring tool, has rated India as the sixth highest user of Twitter. While globally the negative side of unmitigated use of social media is articulated, India has embraced social media without being too bothered about its possible hazards.[2] According to a Microsoft study on June 2012 that more than 50% of the children in India using the net are either threatened or harassed online. The ‘Global Youth Online Behaviour Survey’ conducted by Microsoft, revealed that 53% of the surveyed children aged between eight and 17 in India admitted they were victims of cyber bullying.[3] A survey conducted by Tata Consultancy Services found that while 84 percent of the respondents had internet access at home, 85 percent used social networking site such as Facebook and 79 percent owned mobile phone.[4] Preferring entertainment on the move, 28 percent of the respondents said mobile phone was their favourite gadget. Eighty-eight percent respondents from metropolitan cities had a Facebook account while other platforms such as Orkut and India-based Apna Circle, Ibibo and Hi5 were more popular in small metros.[5] Social psychology is a branch of psychology that deals with how groups behave and how it affects the individual members to which they belong. Now a day, it is obvious that most of us know how the group behaves, rest should be educated. The group it can behave crazy as though the laws are blind and it will never catch them but it is not the real scenario. One of the main objectives of this article is to explain how the children are vulnerable in the cyber space that gives them full freedom to take part in activities as they like with special reference to social networking. Law dealing with the social psychology includes matters like misrepresentation, fraud, cheating, defamation etc. The main purpose of having a computer at home is to widen the knowledge curve of the child through internet. It places both opportunity for the self-directed learning and independence as well as the risk to the child. Lack of parental control is one of the zenith reasons for the negative use of internet by the children. Here, the negative use is all things that are opposite to the purpose for which the computer and internet connectivity