Trigger Warning: The story mentions suicide and child sexual exploitation.
Ever since Australia revoked access to social media late last year for children under 16, the move has caught the imagination of policymakers across the globe, including India.
The Economic Survey 2025-2026 flagged excessive screen time and social media use among children and youth as a growing public health concern linked to digital addiction, anxiety, and reduced academic focus. At least two states—Goa and Andhra Pradesh—are mulling introducing age-appropriate access to social media amid concerns around screen addiction, mental health, and online safety.
“Children are slipping into relentless usage… Women are facing non-stop online abuse. This cannot be ignored,” Nara Lokesh, Minister of IT, Electronics, and Communication in the Andhra Pradesh government, wrote in a post on X.
India’s digital framework already offers some protections for minors. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act mandates verifiable parental consent for users under 18 before processing their data. It also strictly prohibits tracking, behavioural monitoring, and targeted advertising for the demographic.
However, lawmakers are signalling a broader ban. Andhra Pradesh MP Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu plans to introduce a private member’s Bill to restrict social media access for children under 16.
The proponents of age-appropriate restrictions argue that social media limitations can shield children and adolescents from cyberbullying, addiction, algorithms, adult content, and predatory behaviour.
The Case for Age Restriction
Digital addiction is at the top of policymakers’ minds, especially given recent developments.
Three minor sisters in Ghaziabad jumped to their deaths this month in an apparent case of triple suicide. Their father told the authorities that his daughters had been playing an online Korean game for three years. He had recently confiscated and sold their phones, leaving them distressed and unable to communicate with their friends.
The incident is reminiscent of the Blue Whale Challenge, a social network phenomenon that first appeared in 2013 and nudged children to commit self-harm and resort to suicide.
Young people are particularly vulnerable to these online challenges that target adolescents experiencing emotional distress or social isolation. Anupma Gupta, a mental health counsellor and Founder of wellness centre The Happy Image Space, explains that in early childhood, when the brain is still developing, exposure to highly stimulating social media content can interfere with core skills such as attention, language, and emotional regulation.
“Fast-changing visuals and constant stimulation can make it harder for young children to sustain focus and can impact their attention span,” she tells AIM.
A 2024 study of nearly 1,400 adolescents and young adults published in the Journal of Nature and Science of Medicine found that excessive screen time and social media usage are significantly associated with higher rates of depression, anxiety, stress, and lower self-esteem.
Moreover, some civil society activists believe a complete ban on social media for children below 16 is the only effective way to curb rising child sexual exploitation.
At a recent cybercrime conference in Telangana, Bhuwan Ribhu, Founder of NGO network Just Rights for Children, advocated for a national framework mandating age and ID verification on the platforms. “The ban is necessary because digital platforms allow anonymity and fake identities, making children vulnerable. There can be a 40-year-old pretending to be a 15-year-old to exploit a 14-year-old girl,” he said.
Highlighting the scale of the risk, think-tank iSPIRT, which is chairing the Expert Engagement Group on Child Safety and AI constituted by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, shared a report with AIM revealing that an estimated 300 million children—around 12.5% of the world’s child population—are affected by technology-facilitated child sexual exploitation and abuse.
The growing role of generative AI is compounding these risks. The Internet Watch Foundation reported identifying more than 3,000 AI-generated child sexual abuse material in a single month, with about 40% classified under the most severe category of abuse. Also, as per the National Crime Records Bureau, there was a steep rise of 32% in cybercrimes against children in India from 2021 to 2022.
Is Banning Apps the Solution?
However, not everyone agrees that age-based restrictions are the right solution.
Meta tells AIM the company wants to create safe and positive online experiences for young people, and believes parents should decide which apps their teens use. It supports laws that empower parents to approve teen app downloads on app stores.
“Governments considering bans should be careful not to push teens toward less safe, unregulated sites, or logged-out experiences that bypass important protections—like the default safeguards we offer in Instagram’s Teen Accounts,” it says in its response.
Similarly, Apar Gupta, Founder-Director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, notes that while the instinct to protect children online is valid, imposing a strict age-based ban oversimplifies a complex social problem and evades the concern of compulsive scrolling.
Apar argues that a blanket ban is a blunt policy tool. “It often pushes children to workaround apps, concentrates power in the biggest platforms and app stores, and creates pressure for intrusive age checks that expand surveillance and data collection for everyone,” he says.
Circumventing a possible ban can be a major enforcement issue. According to an ABC News report in the aftermath of the ban in Australia, many teenagers tapped their friends or siblings over the age of 16 to bypass the ban, while others reported it was easy to bypass checks on Snapchat, TikTok, and Instagram.
Apar believes that policymakers must focus on smartphone addiction. “Most social media platforms work the way they do due to surveillance advertising that requires constant engagement in a winner-takes-all market that creates tech oligopolies,” he says.
Anupma agrees that bans alone are insufficient and screens are unavoidable. She stresses the need for digital behaviour and mental health education. “I always feel that therapy should be part of the curriculum for children, starting from the beginning,” she says, arguing that this would help children make informed choices rather than simply follow rules.
Meta asserts that it would comply with social media bans wherever they are enforced, but warns that restricting only a few major platforms would do little to improve online safety. “We’ll comply with social media bans where they are enforced, but with teens using ~40 apps weekly, targeting a handful of companies won’t keep them safe. Bans should apply equally across the many apps teens use,” the company says.
Complexities of a Ban
Child artists in India are increasingly monetising their talents on social media platforms, earning through brand sponsorships, collaborations, and ad revenue. According to a Qoruz study, as of March 2025, there are over 83,000 influencers under 16 on Instagram in India. Kid influencers, including Aakriti Sharma, Ishant Mishra, and Zara Zyanna, boast of millions of followers. A social media ban in India could disrupt their income streams.
Moreover, social networks also offer support structures to marginalised and vulnerable groups, like LGBTQ youths, with emotional support, education, and information. Also, movements like climate justice may be impacted. Greta Thunberg was just 15 when she used social media to grow her climate strikes into a global movement.
Additionally, Apar argues that banning social media apps in India may not be a feasible solution. He says, in India, age verification quickly “becomes identity verification in practice,” creating three main risks: privacy harm from new data collection, exclusion of children and families without proper documents or reliable internet access, and misuse through profiling that can discourage lawful speech.
To verify age with any real certainty, platforms would likely require government-issued IDs or biometric checks, which he says could create a “permanent surveillance architecture” and conflict with the Right to Privacy recognised by the Supreme Court in the Puttaswamy judgment. Such systems could also deepen digital exclusion.
India’s debate on social media use by children mirrors concerns being raised worldwide. As policymakers consider bans, stronger platform rules, or digital education, the central challenge will be to protect children without limiting privacy, access, or opportunities.
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