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The southern Indian state of Karnataka, home to the tech hub of Bengaluru, has banned the use of social media by those under the age of 16, becoming the first in India to join global calls for more scrutiny of minors’ digital usage. Concerns surrounding children’s growing social media addiction and exposure to unrestricted internet access have fired up a global debate, prompting Australia to become the first country to ban social media for children in December. Britain, Denmark, and Greece are also studying the issue, and similar considerations are taking shape elsewhere in India, one of the world’s largest social media markets. Karnataka’s Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced the ban in his annual budget speech, citing the objective of preventing adverse effects of increasing mobile usage on children. The ban is expected to raise questions about online safety and the effectiveness of age-based curbs in preventing digital addiction. In Pakistan, where social media usage is also on the rise, the ban has sparked debate about the need for similar measures to protect children from the potential harms of excessive social media use. With India being the world’s second-biggest smartphone market with 750 million devices and a billion internet users, the ban is likely to have significant implications for social media companies, including Meta, which has the highest number of users on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp worldwide. However, some activists and tech experts have called for measures to help children and parents develop healthy and safe social media usage, saying that age-based curbs do not work as children can bypass them with fake identification documents. As the debate around social media usage and online safety continues to grow, it remains to be seen how effective Karnataka’s ban will be in preventing digital addiction among minors and what implications it will have for social media policies globally.
