- A growing global consensus is emerging to restrict social media access for children under 16, with countries like Australia, the UK, and Canada tightening regulations while India debates how best to protect young users online.
- Australia’s experience shows that age restrictions alone are difficult to enforce, as teenagers continue to bypass safeguards, raising questions about the effectiveness of age verification and platform accountability.
- India, particularly through Karnataka’s proposed restrictions, is becoming a key testing ground for balancing child safety, digital rights, parental responsibility, and practical enforcement in the age of social media.
Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much – with a few notable exceptions, this appears to be one of them. A new Pew Research Center poll shows that 56 percent of U.S. Adults believe social media platforms should be entirely prohibited for individuals younger than 16, while just 21 percent disagree. For Republicans and Democrats, that share stands at 59 and 54 percent respectively, but the belief is even stronger among parents – 65 percent feel that minors should not be using social media, compared to 52 percent among adults with no kids under 18.
In 2023, just 81% of U.S. Adults favoured mandatory parental consent for opening social media accounts but that figure has grown to 85%. The percentage favouring mandating age verification for opening social media accounts has increased to 78% from 71% and those who favour a time limit on kids’ social media usage also has climbed from 69% to 78% during the three years.
The United States isn’t just deciding in as a first nation. Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom are establishing or proposing a social media minimum age of 16; similar legislation has passed in Indonesia, Malaysia, and China; similar measures are working their way through legislation in France, Denmark, Spain, Australia, and Greece. California is considering state legislation similar to the federal effort. A concept that was barely considered in 2021 is rapidly becoming global policy.
Australia’s Warned Story
Australia, for example, showed the impact, and the results are alarming. The number of accounts removed or banned on the social media sites, including Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, and YouTube accounts, believed to be younger than age 16 or older than age 16, since Australia’s Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act 2021 officially passed on December 10, 2021, has jumped by almost 5 million.
The British Medical Journal published a study last week in which an Australian public health researcher, Courtney Barnes, reported that more than 85 percent of the Nation’s teens aged 16 or under have tried to access one of the protected platforms every week, mostly using nicknames and private browsers.
Barnes says there’s been an ‘under implementation, undercompliance, and under-circumvention’. The country’s eSafety Commission Industry regulation for social media age restrictions is already investigating 5 platforms, with a maximum fine of up to AUD 49.5 million.
India’s Approach remains Swinging.
With the case of India it has done neither, Although its Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 Digital-Personal-Data-Protection-Rules categorises “child” as someone below the age of 18, a more firm classification than 16 years in the EU or 13 years under U.S.’s COPPA, and mandates platforms to obtain verified parental consent to process children’s data, creating a “de facto” age gate, a working policy to do this – or an approach to verify parent and child age – does not exist, even two years after passing the law. Meanwhile, 90% of teenage Indian children are on social media (ASER Report 2025-26), and “digital addiction” among adolescents shows a public health issue according to India’s Economic Survey 2025-26.
“Excessive social media use can harm mental and physical health” (Dr. Rajesh Sagar, professor of psychiatry, AIIMS), who sees associations between social media use and children’s anxiety, eating disorders, and loneliness.
Child rights advocate Apar Gupta calls a ‘quieter path’ an alternative: regulating the design of platforms, such as autocomplete or algorithmic feeds, rather than children. These are not in silence of those the policy aims to protect. “I don’t think that there is a need for a ban; it will cost more than it helps in terms of knowledge and communication” (Sumaira Bharti, a 12-year-old Delhi student). social-media-dilemma-parental-control-or-government-ban-who-should-protect-children
Karnataka Angle
In India, the closest state-level equivalent is Karnataka, where the state government declared a ban on children under 16 accessing social media. This move appears to have been made in light of the negative impacts of increased smartphone use among kids and positions Karnataka as the first Indian state to seek such an age-based limitation. In the particular case of Karnataka, this issue is a big concern due to Bengaluru being the heart of Indian tech – the state lies at the spectrum of digital innovation and online child safety regulations. As such, the policy in the state has the potential to become a test case in wider debates across India on age verification, platform accountability, and the safeguarding of children online.
This step is significant not just symbolically, but in a very structural way, because it places an Indian state at the center of a discussion on kids’ digital safety that Pew’s data reflects across a global landscape. While India is not starting from zero and has some protections, such as parental consent for kids’ data under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, as well as age-gating of platforms and age-based content classifications under the IT Rules, 2021, there have been ongoing issues with their implementation. In that sense, Karnataka’s announcement is a keenly watched policy experiment to see whether an increased minimum age is feasible in a country where children have little trouble telling lies about their age, and whether regulation will have to engage with protecting minors and with what is possible, all in compliance with our Constitution. Karnataka bans social media under age 16 via – Reuters
Ages, Laws, and Logic: The Age Verification Divide
What the Australia experiment and India’s Approach reveal is that creating a law to kick children off platforms isn’t the same as implementing it. The responsibility of closing the cracks that age-verification tech continually reinvents remains with regulators and parents, the responsibility of creating easily defensible assurance systems is on platforms, and ultimately, lawmakers need to answer the difficult question of whether the ultimate aim is a child’s engagement – or changing the product that makes disengagement such a struggle.
Clear Cut Child Protection Desk
New Delhi, UPDATED: July 06, 2026 09:00 IST
Written By: Yatharth Pathak
