Banning social media in India for minors is needed but there are risks, experts say

In a court hearing earlier this week, the central government told the Supreme Court that it planned to amend IT intermediary rules. The changes would stop users under the age of 18 from making social media accounts.

If passed, India would join a list of growing countries who have planned, or enforced, similar bans recently. Australia was the first to implement such restrictions in December last year. The country directed all social media platforms, including Instagram, X, Facebook, and YouTube, to block accounts of users under 16. Since then, countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia have also enforced similar bans, while many, like the UK, have passed bans that will come into effect soon.advertisement❮❯ Read Full StoryThe social media problemThe topic of banning, or restricting, social media for teenagers comes amid growing concerns over mental health. The Economic Survey 2025–26 flagged social media addiction among those aged 15-24. The survey stated that social media addiction was strongly associated with “anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, and cyberbullying stress.”

The concerns have been heard around the world. Earlier this year, Meta, which runs Instagram and Facebook, agreed to pay $18 billion in settlement in the US over a lawsuit. The lawsuit alleged that the two platforms had harmed children. Though the company denies any wrongdoing.

Mukul Kumar, CEO of cybersecurity firm Presence Global, says he has seen teens and families be affected first-hand. “Cyberbullying, mental health damage, digital footprints that follow children for life. These were not hypothetical risks (of teens being on social media). These were things parents were calling me about because they had nowhere else to turn,” he tells India Today Tech.

Kumar explains that social media was never designed with children in mind. Yet today, they have become a way for engagement on various platforms. “Children are not just users. They are the most vulnerable participants in a system designed by adults, for profit, built to maximize engagement and not wellbeing,” he adds.Enforcing the ban

Before we get into how a ban could actually be implemented, let’s discuss what the current laws say. While there is no law that specifically bans minors from using social media, the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act of 2023 requires platforms to get parental consent for anyone under the age of 18 before processing their personal data. Though this law goes into effect on May 13, 2027.

If the government does pass amendments to the IT intermediary rules, it could allow for a mechanism where social media platforms would need to verify the age of users. But this is the tricky part.

“The DPDP Act defines a child as anyone under 18 and requires verifiable parental consent before a platform processes their data. Nobody had built the machinery to enforce that,” says Sarthak Dubey, co-founder of cybersecurity firm Mitigata. “The changes to IT rules are less a new idea and more India finally building the plumbing for a rule that has existed on paper since 2023."

India could learn from other countries before it imposes a ban. Australia, for instance, puts the responsibility on platforms to verify a user’s age. Malaysia, on the other hand, uses the government ID portal.

Sarthak Dubey notes that a major problem around verification in India might come in the mechanism itself and the resources to build it. “Most implementations I've seen (in the past) lean towards doing the minimum needed to comply, rather than building something that actually works,” he explains. “Real verification costs money and slows down growth, and a restriction without real enforcement behind it doesn't remove the underlying risk. It relocates it somewhere with less visibility, which can be harder for a parent to track than the original problem.”

Results on social media bans so far have been mixed. While Australia says it has deleted millions of accounts of minors, a study from its internet regulator, eSafety Commissioner, showed that eight out of ten children were still using social media three months after the ban. “Within months teenagers in Australia had found workarounds. VPNs. Older siblings' accounts. Fake ages. The platforms struggled to verify age at scale. The intention was right. The infrastructure was not ready,” Mukul Kumar says.

Kumar adds, “Passing the law is the easy part. Enforcing it is where every country has struggled.”

Meanwhile, Indonesia reported the removal of around five million underage accounts. But as per reports, many children continued to access social media by entering false birthdates, or by using adults’ identification or accounts. In some cases, accounts of adults were also banned.

What makes matters more complicated for India is the sheer scale of this potential ban. “India has hundreds of millions of social media users under 18. No country has attempted enforcement at this scale,” Mukul Kumar notes. “What worked in Australia, a market of 26 million people total, will not automatically work here.”The risks that come with it

It is likely that India’s mechanism for such restrictions would take lessons from those used by other governments. But the act of verification itself may come with its own risks. Mukul Kumar explains, “To protect a child's privacy online, you first have to know they are a child. To know they are a child, you need their age. To verify their age, you need identity data. And identity data linked to social media is exactly what creates surveillance risk and breach exposure.”

Be it via facial recognition or ID checks, there are several ways verification can be done. Sarthak Dubey suggests that DigiLocker could be an option for age verification as it would not need users to give data to a social media platform. “The mechanisms under discussion, DigiLocker, Aadhaar-based checks, app store-level validation, already exist and each has a specific strength,” he explains. “DigiLocker in particular can confirm someone is over or under 18 without the platform ever seeing the underlying document, which is the more defensible design.”

Though if the government goes for a different approach, such as shifting the process to platforms, it can pose risks especially for those with malicious intent. “Building age verification means building a record of who is a minor, tied to identity documents or biometrics, and that record becomes a high-value target regardless of intent,” Dubey adds. “The moment a "confirmed minor" database exists, it's worth stealing for anyone running scams, stalking, or targeting children specifically.”

Mukul Kumar believes that the ideal mechanism should be one that “verifies once and stores nothing” without giving sensitive information to platforms. “The platform gets a yes or no – this person is over 18 or they are not. The platform does not get the Aadhaar number,” he says. “The government does not build a database linking Aadhaar to Instagram accounts. The underlying identity data never touches the social media platform.”

Kumar insists that the government should be the one who does the verification and not leave it up to platforms. “Platforms will always choose the cheapest option. And the cheapest option for age verification is almost always the most privacy-invasive one,” he adds.- EndsAlso Read | India may ban social media for teens, other countries are trying too but it's complicatedAlso Read | Less doomsday, more charm: How Mark Zuckerberg got his mojo backAlso Read | Anthropic & OpenAI build AI, so why need govt permission to slow down? Experts blame AI arms race

Armaan loves to keep an eye on everything happening in the world of tech and AI. You will find him testing new gadgets, exploring the latest LLMs and making sense of the emerging tech. When not working around tech, he will be exploring new music or catching up on motorsport or aviation.