Parental alienation and digital manipulation: A socio-legal study on how technology enables emotional abuse of children after divorce
Keywords:
Parental Alienation, Digital Manipulation, Child Custody, Emotional Abuse, Indian Family Law, Technology and Divorce, Child RightsAbstract
Divorce and separation, already painful experiences for families, have taken on a new and troubling dimension in the age of digital technology. This paper examines the intersection of parental alienation a process by which one parent psychologically manipulates a child to reject the other parent and the growing use of digital tools such as social media, smartphones, spyware, and messaging applications to facilitate and intensify such manipulation. Through a socio-legal lens, the paper explores the conceptual foundations of parental alienation, the various ways in which technology enables and amplifies emotional abuse of children post-divorce, the psychological impact on affected children, and the current legal framework in India that addresses or fails to adequately address this phenomenon. The paper argues that digital manipulation in the context of parental alienation constitutes a serious form of child abuse and calls for greater legal recognition, judicial sensitivity, and legislative reform to protect children from this invisible yet deeply damaging form of harm.
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