India’s Social Media Ban for Children Needs a Smarter Approach, Not Blanket Restrictions
by Shatakshi Shekhar
India’s proposed social media age restrictions may fail to protect children. Here’s why platform accountability and safer digital design are better than blanket bans.
India stands at the precipice of a profound policy error. In an ostensibly noble bid to safeguard children online, regulators are preparing to restrict children rather than the platforms that imperil them. Karnataka has proposed banning social media access for those under 16, Andhra Pradesh has suggested a similar restriction for children under 13 within the next 90 days, and the Centre is considering a calibrated, age-tiered regulatory framework. Yet all these proposals rest on the same flawed premise: that distance from a platform automatically translates into safety.
A framework that holds platforms accountable for the design choices that make their products addictive and compulsive will protect children far more effectively than one centred solely on age verification. The former addresses the structural problem; the latter is largely cosmetic.
We need not speculate about the futility of verification-first regulation. Australia’s ban on social media for children under 16, introduced in December 2025, has become a cautionary tale rather than a success story. Nearly 70 per cent of those barred reportedly remain active on the very platforms they were meant to leave. VPN usage has risen by 170 per cent, and many children who migrated did so not to safer spaces but to unregulated platforms. The United Kingdom’s comparatively softer regime has fared little better: 32 per cent of children reportedly circumvent age checks, with nearly a quarter doing so with parental assistance. A law that depends primarily on parental enforcement misreads household realities, where parents often become inadvertent accomplices in bypassing the restrictions.
Italy and Brazil illustrate the two competing regulatory philosophies before India. Italy’s Senate has recognised that the problem lies not with the child but with the corporate architecture of digital platforms. Its proposed legislation, notably devoid of age thresholds, compels platforms to abandon default profiling practices and explain their recommendation algorithms with greater transparency. As one Italian senator observed, algorithmic curation engineers attention through corporate choice, not technical necessity.
Brazil, by contrast, requires every user under 16 to link their account to a verified parent or guardian, wagering that identity tied to an accountable adult provides the strongest foundation for online protection. India’s emerging legislation will inevitably gravitate toward one of these two models, and Parliament’s forthcoming Monsoon Session will determine which path it chooses.
The debate has already shifted internationally from parental responsibility to platform accountability. In March 2026, a Los Angeles jury found Meta and Google liable for intentionally designing digital platforms that harmed a young user’s mental health, reinforcing the principle that such harm is engineered rather than incidental. Meanwhile, the Madras High Court, while hearing a related public interest litigation, observed that age-based restrictions alone would merely encourage advertisers to shift their attention to gaming, connected television, and influencer-driven content. Meaningful intervention must reshape the commercial incentives of the digital ecosystem rather than merely alter a child’s account settings.
A blanket prohibition also carries significant constitutional costs. Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution of India protects not only the freedom of speech and expression but also the right to receive information. Restricting access to digital platforms—which increasingly constitute the essential infrastructure of modern civic, educational, and social life—risks impairing this fundamental freedom. Furthermore, legislation that makes no distinction between a nine-year-old child and a sixteen-year-old adolescent struggles to satisfy the constitutional doctrine of proportionality that has evolved following the Supreme Court’s Right to Privacy judgment. Such an approach also sits uneasily with India’s own legislative framework, including the Juvenile Justice Act and the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, both of which recognise that legal protections must be calibrated according to a child’s developmental stage.
Finally, the techno-utopian belief that verification technologies alone can solve this challenge must be discarded. Deep packet inspection frequently misidentifies legitimate internet traffic, while hardware attestation disadvantages users with older devices. More fundamentally, most Indian children access the internet through shared family smartphones or tablets. In such circumstances, every OTP verification or biometric authentication confirms the identity of the adult device owner rather than the child actually using the platform.
Greece’s Kids Wallet, built upon state-backed digital identity credentials, offers a pragmatic middle path that India’s DigiLocker ecosystem could plausibly support. Such a model may deter casual circumvention without compelling private platforms to become repositories of sensitive identity data. Even then, however, the shared-device challenge remains one that technology alone cannot resolve; it ultimately requires household supervision and responsible parenting.
A graded regulatory framework remains New Delhi’s soundest instinct, but its foundation will determine its success. A verification-first regime risks repeating Australia’s slow-motion failure, whereas a framework grounded in platform accountability and responsible design gives India an opportunity to succeed where others have faltered. The objective should not be to regulate children but to regulate the algorithms that shape their online experiences. It would be a monumental mistake to legislate as though the evidence accumulated over the past year had not already illuminated the path forward.
About the writer:
Shatakshi Shekhar is a Columbia University-trained technology policy lawyer and Lead Counsel (Policy & Regulatory Affairs) at Sakura Law Chambers. She specializes in AI regulation, privacy, data governance, and digital policy, advising businesses on navigating the evolving technology landscape. Her experience spans Bank of America, leading Indian legal chambers, the Office of a Member of Parliament, and the Office of the Solicitor General of India, positioning her at the intersection of law, public policy, and emerging technologies.
