Game on, Parents off?
Last week, the Lok Sabha passed the Online Gaming Bill, 2025 with a clean, catchy promise: make online gaming safe, particularly for children. The provisions sound reassuring. Ban the betting. Limit the playtime. Hold platforms accountable. And most crucially, place parents at the center as the final gatekeepers. No parental consent, no play.
Simple, right? Except, it isn’t.
This is not the first time Indian lawmakers have looked to parents as the safety lock on children’s digital lives. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act of 2023 demanded the same—no data processing of minors without parental approval. At the time, critics noted the irony: parents were cast as all-knowing guardians in a digital world they barely understood. We placed them in the cockpit without teaching them how to fly.
Two years later, the cockpit looks even more daunting. Flashing neon lights, immersive loops, multiplayer ecosystems that children navigate like natives while their guardians stumble like tourists. The state has again handed parents the referee’s whistle—without ever explaining the rules of the game.
Law vs. the Living Room
On paper, the bill looks muscular. It calls out gambling disguised as gaming, forces platforms to register with oversight bodies, and mandates safeguards such as playtime limits and spending caps for minors. It even acknowledges psychological risks like addiction. At its heart, though, is the principle of parental consent.
Yet families don’t operate in legalese. They operate in living rooms.
A parent clicking “I consent” without reading the fine print is not a safeguard; they are a rubber stamp. A parent who sighs, “I don’t understand these apps,” has effectively left their child alone in a casino and hoped for the best. The chasm between legislative ambition and household reality is vast—and widening.
The Illusion of Control
We’ve been here before. When smartphones swept through Indian households, children embraced Instagram trends, Discord servers, and gaming guilds, while parents were still fumbling with how to silence the family WhatsApp group. The generational knowledge gap was so wide that rules at home became clichés: “Don’t use the phone too much,” or “Focus on your studies.”
The new law imagines consent as a magic key. But consent without comprehension is meaningless. If parents cannot tell the difference between an in-game skin and a loot box, between a role-playing server and a betting exchange, their consent is little more than a blind nod.
In practice, the law has given parents the joystick. The uncomfortable truth: many don’t know where the buttons are.
Parenting Needs a Reboot
The easy narrative is to blame parents: careless, digitally illiterate, unwilling to adapt. But the reality is harsher. India has never invested in preparing parents for the digital age. We treat technology as an optional add-on—something kids will “figure out,” while adults can remain proudly ignorant. That might have been barely tolerable in 2010. In 2025, it is reckless.
The playground has shifted. Strangers don’t knock on doors anymore; they send friend requests. Pocket money doesn’t change hands in crumpled notes; it leaks invisibly through in-app purchases. Childhood friendships form not in neighborhood gullies but on Fortnite servers and Roblox maps. Parenting, then, cannot remain stuck in analog instincts. It needs a reboot.
Rebooted parenting does not mean banning screens or forcing children into digital exile. It means equipping parents with awareness, tools, and confidence to guide their children in this terrain. That shift must happen at scale—not just at dining tables, but at the level of schools, communities, and governments.
Schools as the First Line
The most obvious entry point is the school system. Today, parent-teacher meetings are almost entirely consumed by grades, attendance, and discipline. These meetings could easily devote twenty minutes to digital safety: the mechanics of online games, the psychology of in-game spending, the warning signs of cyberbullying.
Schools should host regular literacy workshops not only for students but for parents. Imagine sessions where teachers explain what loot boxes are, how grooming occurs in chat rooms, or how parental control dashboards can restrict risky behavior. These need not be technical masterclasses; they can be plain-language primers, backed by simple handouts and live demonstrations.
Education policy has spent years emphasizing coding and STEM. It is time to emphasize the other side: digital resilience and literacy for the entire family.
Community as a Safety Net
Parenting is not a solo act. It thrives in community. Local resident associations, mohalla committees, even religious and cultural groups can host awareness drives.