Kerala’s high courts have repeatedly criticized police for using POCSO (Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act) in cases where the video shows consensual, non-penetrative teen behavior. Yet police continue to do so under media pressure. The IT Act's Section 67 (punishment for publishing obscene material) is applied to the teens themselves for having filmed each other.
On Facebook and YouTube comment sections, older generations expressed outrage. "These are children of the 'A+ culture,'" wrote one user, referring to the state's high academic scoring system. "While parents spend lakhs on tuition, these students are vaping and mocking their elders. The school must expel them immediately."
Conversely, a loud counter-movement emerged on Twitter (X) and Instagram. #LetTeensBeTeens trended briefly in Kochi. Proponents argued that the video was a gross invasion of privacy—recorded without consent and distributed with malicious intent. "We put 16-year-olds under 14 hours of study pressure, and then we are shocked when they crack a sarcastic joke?" asked a popular Instagram psychologist. "The crime here is not the act; it is the recording and the public shaming of minors."
Kerala’s Police Cyber Cell has issued repeated warnings. Under the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, sharing any video that identifies a child in a conflict situation or embarrassing scenario is a punishable offense. Yet, the law is rarely enforced against the original sharer.
Furthermore, schools are caught in a bind. To save their reputation, many schools resort to expelling the students in the video, punishing the victim of a leak rather than the student who recorded and shared it.
“We are punishing children for the failures of adults,” says Adv. Priya Varghese, a cyber law expert based in Ernakulam. “The child who records the video is also a child. The real crime lies with the adults who take that private school moment and broadcast it to the world for likes.”
The viral video of Kerala teens is rarely about the teens themselves. It is a Rorschach test for a society in transition—between traditional patriarchy and modern individualism, between high literacy and low digital wisdom. Social media discourse does not resolve the underlying tensions of adolescent behavior; it exploits them for political, moral, and entertainment capital. Until Kerala’s adults—parents, teachers, politicians, and journalists—stop performing outrage and start practicing empathy, each new viral video will produce the same cycle: a teen’s mistake becomes a lifelong sentence, and the digital panopticon claims another child.
Reddit and 4chan-style anonymous forums took a darker, more cynical turn. The students’ faces, even when blurred, became the basis for hundreds of reaction memes. One still frame, showing a student rolling his eyes while holding a graphing calculator, became a statewide symbol for "burnt-out gifted kid syndrome."
This "memeification" worried child psychologists. Dr. Aparna Menon, a consultant at the Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (IMHANS) in Kozhikode, told this publication: "When the internet turns a minor’s lapse in judgment into a meme, it strips them of their right to reform. That image follows them forever. We are seeing rising cases of acute anxiety in teens who fear that any misstep could be recorded and immortalized."
Most schools respond by banning smartphones entirely, conducting fear-based "cyber safety" assemblies that victim-blame, and installing more CCTV cameras—the digital panopticon made physical. Few schools implement restorative practices or media literacy curricula that teach teens about consent, bystander intervention, and the ethics of sharing.
This group, usually comprised of middle-aged men and conservative teachers, argues that the teens in these viral videos lack "fear." Their primary thesis: "In our time, a single slap solved this."
