Indians do nothing concrete about anything but are very much interested in getting concerned about everything. Of late, a lot of people in the country are very much concerned about the harmful effects of digital platforms on young minds. The idea took roots from a stupidity in Australia. Since late 2024, Australia had been mulling a ban on under-16 kids from using social media. The Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act was passed by their parliament in November 2024. Since December 10, 2025, the ban has officially kicked in, requiring platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, YouTube, etc., to prevent under-16s from having accounts.
In India, the Supreme Court (April 4, 2025) had refused to examine a plea seeking to prohibit children below 13 from using social media, observing it was a policy issue. In the case of Child Rights Foundation v. Union of India & Ors (Writ Petition (Civil) No. 287 of 2025), the apex court refrained from issuing directions to the government regarding age restrictions for social media access, instead emphasizing that such policy decisions fall within the legislative domain.
What the Australian Ban Order entails
The change is an amendment to Australia’s Online Safety Act requiring “age-restricted social media platforms” to take reasonable steps to prevent under-16s from having accounts. The duty, incidentally, falls on platforms; individual minors or parents are not criminalised. Platforms covered include the major global services (TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, X, Reddit, Facebook, etc.). The law requires platforms to implement age verification/blocking measures and to respond to the eSafety Commissioner’s guidance.
Public rationale given by the government: protect children’s mental health and safety—reduce exposure to grooming, harmful content, bullying, and algorithmic harms (addiction, body image pressures). The government frames it as a child-safety first step.
Have other Western Countries done the same?
No major Western country had enacted an identical national ban for under-16s before Australia’s order, but several countries and bodies have moved in similar directions (age floors, parental-consent requirements, design restrictions). Examples include:
EU/European Parliament MEPs voted in late 2025 backing a 16-minimum-age floor for social media (with possible parental consent exceptions for 13–15) and other design restrictions. France, Spain, several EU states have tightened parental consent, or have set higher minimum ages. Other states/countries (some U.S. states, and parts of Europe) have proposals or partial measures that restrict minors’ access or require verification. None exactly mirror Australia’s federal duty-on-platforms approach in scope and enforcement prior to December 2025.
Critique of the Australian Approach
Conceptual/behavioural fallacy: The “time thus saved will be used productively” assumption.
The law rests implicitly on the hope that removing social media will free time that kids will use for productive activities (say study, reading, etc.). That is just a fond hope. Time freed from one activity does not automatically translate to productive behaviour—it may well be replaced by other unproductive or harmful behaviours (gaming, aimless browsing, unsafe in-person gatherings, taking cooperating adults’ devices, etc.). Parental supervision, habits and culture shape how discretionary time is used; law cannot magically convert idle time into study.
Responsibility and Agency: Parenting vs State Paternalism: Kids wasting their time on social media is essentially a parenting problem. It is parental neglect if they do not know or bother to counsel or reprimand their kids for excessive use. The public policy shift moves a responsibility that belongs primarily to parents and educators onto platforms/regulators. For families that failed at supervision in the first place (for had they not failed, the kids would not have been wasting so much tme on social media), a platform ban will not automatically and immediately turn them into better parents.
Enforcement and Circumvention Practicalities: Young people are tech-savvy; VPNs, fake IDs, or using a cooperative adult’s device (such as some friends elder brother or sister; some domestic servant; or the like) can easily bypass age-related account blocks. Early reports already show teens flaunting workarounds and spikes in VPN searches after the announcement. If a large share simply moves to workarounds or to less-regulated apps, the law mainly displaces harm rather than reducing it—and can push kids to darker corners of the internet where risks can be greater.
Privacy and Surveillance Costs of Age Verification: Effective enforcement will rely on age verification. That triggers privacy and civil-liberty issues.Document checks or biometric verification create databases and enable scope creep. Who stores the ID/biometric evidence? For how long, and under what safeguards? These systems themselves are targets for abuse or breach.The technical fix (biometrics, live face matching) is invasive and may contravene privacy norms.
Legal Issues of Free Speech: The policy will likely face legal challenges on freedom of expression or proportionality grounds.
Little Evidence of Net Mental-Health Benefits at Population Scale: Popular impressions are one thing; scientific facts are quite another. While some studies link heavy social-media use with harms (sleep disruption, body image issues), causal links at population level are strongly contested.
If the idea of banning social media is to ‘clean’ their minds of sexual content, it is daydreaming. All these crusaders do not know that kids can easily seek compensation elsewhere. If they are using social media for sex chats, sharing intimate photos, running sexually oriented forums or chat groups, or watching pornographic material, they can still satiate their sexual desires by buying extremely cheap porn clips. For those who do not have a computer of their own, there is a lot of porn available for downloading directly on to their mobile phones and there are any numbers of shops selling it—for as low as Rs. 150 for about 200 short video clips on the memory card. Several HD films (720p) totalling 16 GB can be had for about Rs. 400. It is called ‘sex on the go’. Lower resolution clips are even cheaper.
Likely Practical Consequences
Circumvention: VPNs, fake accounts, adult devices—making enforcement arms-race-like. Tech-savvy kids will lie about ages (e.g., via VPNs, deepfakes, or adult devices like a “servant’s phone”). There are reports of kids tricking biometric scans by “scrunching faces.”
Migration to less-regulated spaces: Users may shift to emerging apps or encrypted services with fewer safeguards, potentially raising grooming/harms rather than reducing them. They may drift to unregulated “darker corners” (e.g., unmonitored forums), increasing predation risks—negating the ban’s goal.
Privacy trade-offs: Age checks/eKYC raise centralized identity/data collection risks.
Policy signalling: Other governments may copy an attractive political headline without even understanding the complexity of the issue.
The Real Reasons of Social Media Addiction
Kids who are addicted to social media are generally poor in studies. Though addiction eats up their time, it is not the addiction per se that makes them weak in studies; they are drawn towards social media as a compensatory and diversionary mechanism. Because they are not bright or intelligent enough and hence poor in studies; they seek to compensate for it elsewhere. Their hurt ego and the injured sense of self-respect for not having made a place for themselves in the conventional sense is compensated to some extent by their popularity on social media, the number of likes they garner and the appreciation for their photos, videos or reels. In other words, social media helps them show off. It helps them project an image of themselves to the world, which is no their real self. If they top in the class, may be only the classmates would know. If they become popular on social media for whatever reason, thousands or hundreds of thousands would know them. One they get positive response, it becomes what we call in electronics a positive feedback circuit. They devote more and more time to social media and end up becoming addict.
Academically weak children immerse themselves in social media not because social media caused the weakness, but because they are trying to escape the discomfort of their own insufficiency. Research on compensatory behaviour, self-esteem regulation, identity construction, social comparison, and escapist coping mechanisms confirms this. Social media offers:
- Low entry barriers to fame,
- Instant gratification,
- Low-risk validation,
- Asymmetric rewards (a mediocre student can still get 200K views on a dance reel).
Thus, it becomes a parallel merit system they can “win” at, whereas the formal system has rejected them. A kid who could never compete in a textbook arms race can compete with a 15-second dance clip shot on a Rs. 10,000 phone.
Social-media interfaces are engineered for:
- Intermittent rewards (likes, comments),
- Novelty (infinite scroll),
- Algorithmic personalisation.
This produces a reinforcement schedule identical to what makes slot machines addictive. However, this doesn’t create the initial vulnerability; rather, it exploits existing emotional fractures. The virtual world is intoxicating especially for those who are dissatisfied with who they are offline.
In earlier generations, status came from: academic achievement, athletic merit, artistic skill, or family reputation. Social media has levelled the very concept of prestige: you don’t need talent; you don’t need intelligence; you don’t need hard work; and you don’t need real-world skills. A 14-year-old with minimal ability can become “famous” in two hours. Thus, the virtual world rewards low-effort exhibitionism, while the real world punishes low performance. For children struggling academically, which world is more attractive?
Social media acts as: a currency (followers = power); a status index; a conversation foundation (“Did you see my reel?”); and a participation requirement (“If you’re not on the group, you’re invisible”).
Moreover, populist political leaders praise digital youth entrepreneurship (Instagram reels, YouTube creators) because: it looks modern; it shows youth empowerment; and it highlights economic opportunity without jobs. But the same ecosystem creates the addictive trap we are discussing.
The Sheer Stupidity of the Ban Idea
You see, restricting porn and drugs to kids can be understood. After all, they are related to criminal activities. I also agree with the harmful content exposure logic: a 2025 study highlighted widespread access to misinformation, violence, and manipulative algorithms targeting youth.
However, the argument that banning social media for the kids will save time for them to make them more responsible students or youth is plain bullshit. It presumes, without any basis, that the kids would automatically utilize the time thus saved for studies or some other productive activity. There is a fallacy in this.
Indian kids are dumb not because of social media; they spend time on social media because they are dumb.
The source of dumbness lies elsewhere (including our education system) and we, in our collective intellectual bankruptcy as a nation, do not have the moral courage to grapple with the complexity. Nobody in the country has the courage to address the rotten education system, which is based entirely on rote learning and where even bright students do not study a single line outside of their textbooks. The very atmosphere in the country is heavy with the air of anti-intellectualism. Stupidity plus ignorance, once regarded a matter of shame are now flaunted as badges of honour. Interested readers may refer to my ‘The Dumbing Down of India’ for a detailed exposition.
If your kid is wasting unnecessary time in social media or has an addiction to it, it is a parenting failure. The parents must have ensured that the kid spends only the minimum necessary time on social media. You should have been monitoring how they spend their time outside of school/colleges. Then, for those parents who failed in monitoring the social media activities of their kids in the first place, it cannot be expected that, post-ban they would be so fastidious as to make the kids study books thereafter. The simple fact is that in countries like India, the entire education system is so structured that kids do not read a single line outside of their textbooks. Thus, even if social media is banned, the kids would either be whiling away their time in equally useless activities or would perhaps use the phone of some adult (such as a servant or some other such person) they could take in confidence for indulging in social media.
Social media addiction is not a problem arising out of high technology; it is a psychological and cultural symptom of a deeper malaise of all-pervasive dumbness. A blanket ban cannot fix the psychological fractures that drive addiction. This country lacks both moral and intellectual courage to grapple with the complexities of this issue and is given to piling on to gimmickry.
