Chitra at DifferentTruths.com explores India’s push for age-based social media curbs amid rising child screen addiction, echoing global calls for safer digital futures.

• India enters global dialogues on age-based restrictions for children’s use of social media.
• The Economic Survey 2025-26, released on January 29, 2025, urges immediate age-based restrictions on digital platforms, underlining that compulsive screen use by young people is imposing high economic and social costs.
• The country’s proposed legislation, ‘Social Media (Age Restrictions and Online Safety)’, may soon become a reality.
• The governments of Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka have proposed laws to restrict minors’ access to social media.

Are your children spending too much screen time on sites that you don’t approve of, and worse still, you don’t know of?

The recent news of the three minor sisters in Ghaziabad ending their lives by jumping off the ninth floor as a result of conflict with their parents over their dependence on online games and serials is a tragic wake-up call to the risks posed by social media to the lives and mental health of children.

India’s chief economic adviser has raised further concerns for parents, stating that social media platforms’ algorithms are designed to maximise engagement among users aged 15 to 24.

Adding to the anxiety is a recent study by LocalCircles, India’s leading community social platform, which finds that six in 10 parents say OTT and social media platforms display inappropriate ads for children. Their sample comprised 30,000 parents across 305 districts in India.

But there is hope for worried parents like you, losing sleep over your children surfing unsafe and unregulated, predatory sites and giving away confidential information.

India is part of urgent global conversations about age-based restrictions on children’s use of social media, amid widespread concern. The proposed legislation, ‘Social Media (Age Restrictions and Online Safety)’, which would introduce national social media curbs for children, may soon become law.

The law may be passed sooner rather than later, as the government is likely to act on the findings of the Economic Survey 2025-26, released on January 29, 2025, which urges immediate age-based restrictions on digital platforms, noting that compulsive screen use by young people imposes high economic and social costs. The Survey has flagged serious concerns about the adverse impacts of social media gaming apps and autoplay features that promote aggressive advertising on sexual wellness, lingerie, surrogate liquor and tobacco that are often vulgar and inappropriate topics for children.

The unregulated use of social media by children becomes especially concerning because India is the largest market for platforms like Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram (with 403 and 481 million users in India, according to Data Reportal, a research firm), and YouTube (500 million users), and is the second largest smartphone market, with 750 million devices and nearly a billion users, as per figures released by Reuters. There is equal disquiet about Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will bring challenges and difficulties we cannot even fathom at this stage, let alone begin to imagine.

The Survey also takes serious cognisance of the decline in children’s behavioural health, noting that an increasing number of children are becoming vulnerable to poor academic performance, sleep deprivation, and even acute depression on account of ‘digital addiction’, where the information overload is often misleading and erroneous. 

Although the Seventh Schedule restricts the regulation of social media to the Union government, particularly cyberspace, state governments are permitted to legislate in overlapping areas. The governments of Goa, Andhra Pradesh, and Karnataka have already taken the lead at the state level and have proposed laws to restrict minors’ access to social media. 

They are following in the footsteps of countries worldwide. Australia enacted national legislation in November 2025 banning social media use for children under 16, placing the burden of compliance on platforms rather than families. France has approved legislation banning children under 15 from accessing social media. In Denmark, the parliament has reached an agreement to ban social media use for children under 15. Finland has made a similar decision, and the UK and Canada plan to follow suit.

Critics in India and abroad are less optimistic about the laws, arguing that the internet is unsafe and that children can circumvent regulations by creating fake identities. Counsellors, on the other hand, offer solutions, saying that promoting sports and other outdoor activities will keep children away from computers.

Parents, however, are unequivocal: they favour curbs and penalties on social media platforms.

Picture design by Anumita Roy

Chitra Gopalakrishnan

Chitra Gopalakrishnan, a New Delhi-based writer, uses her ardour for writing to break down the barriers between nonfiction and fiction, narratology and psychoanalysis, marginalia and manuscript, and tree-ism and capitalism.