Karnataka on Friday announced banning social media access for children below the age of 16, becoming the first state to announce such a move and triggering a wider debate on whether state governments can effectively regulate minors’ online activity. Within hours, Andhra Pradesh said it would introduce restrictions on social media use by children under 13, signalling that the issue may quickly gather momentum across states.
Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced the proposal while presenting the state Budget for 2026-27, saying the restriction was intended to prevent the adverse effects of rising mobile phone use among children. The government, however, said the framework for implementation and enforcement is still being worked out.
The twin announcements come amid growing concern among policymakers about the impact of social media on young users, including excessive screen time, cyberbullying and exposure to harmful content. Australia became the first country to introduce a nationwide ban on social media for under-16s in 2025, while several European countries are examining similar measures.
Global Context and Platform Pushback
Technology companies cautioned that selective restrictions may prove difficult to enforce. Meta Platforms, which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, said it would comply with legal requirements but warned that targeting a limited number of platforms may not address the broader problem.
“We will comply with social media bans where they are enforced, but with teens using around 40 apps weekly, targeting a handful of companies won’t keep them safe,” the company said in a statement. Meta said such restrictions could push teenagers toward unregulated services or logged-out experiences that bypass platform safeguards such as Instagram’s Teen Accounts. The company added that it supports measures that allow parents to approve teenagers’ app downloads through app stores.
India is among the largest markets globally for social media platforms. Instagram and Facebook each have more than 400 million users in the country, according to DataReportal. Snapchat has more than 200 million users in India, while X has over 20 million.
Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu said the state would implement a ban on social media use by children under 13 within 90 days. A decision on whether to extend the restriction to older teenagers will be taken after consultations with stakeholders.
Legal and technology experts said translating such concerns into enforceable restrictions may prove difficult.
Enforceability Gap
Cyber law expert Pavan Duggal said questions remain over how such bans would operate in practice. “If a child accesses social media despite the ban, who will file a complaint and who will be held responsible — the child, the parent or the platform?” he said. Duggal added that enforcement could become more complicated if minors access platforms while travelling outside the state or through networks located elsewhere.
Some experts warned that enforcing age-based restrictions may require intrusive identity verification systems. “Age verification typically involves collecting identity data or using facial age-estimation technologies, which raises significant privacy and data protection issues,” a legal expert said.
Legal experts further added that regulation of digital intermediaries largely falls under central legislation such as the Information Technology Act, raising the possibility of overlap between state initiatives and national law.
Apar Gupta, founding director of the Internet Freedom Foundation, said “a blanket ban provides only a comforting illusion of control”. Aparajita Bharti of the Quantum Hub said that a ban is unlikely to work given high shared-device usage in Indian households.
With nearly a third of the country’s population under the age of 30, the country represents one of the world’s largest youth markets for social media platforms.