OPINION | India May Follow France On Children's Social Media, But It Should Not Copy The Ban

When France moved to prohibit children under 15 from accessing social media, it did more than pass another technology regulation. It gave governments everywhere a politically simple answer to an emotionally difficult question: how do we protect children from digital environments that were never designed around their well-being?

India will inevitably confront the same question. In fact, the conversation has already begun. Karnataka has announced its intention to restrict social media use for children under 16, while policymakers, parents and educators are increasingly concerned about addictive design, cyberbullying, harmful content, online grooming and the commercial profiling of young users.

The temptation will be to ask whether India should copy France. That may be the wrong question.

India is likely to follow the direction of France’s approach, but not necessarily its exact design. The more useful question is whether we can build an Indian model that protects children without creating a new surveillance system for every internet user.

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A Child Safety Law Shouldn't Become An Identity Verification Law

A blanket age ban is attractive because it draws a clear line. Below a certain age, access is prohibited. Yet that simplicity disappears the moment enforcement begins. A platform cannot reliably prevent a 14-year-old from opening an account unless it can determine the age of everyone attempting to use the service. Age assurance therefore becomes an identity and privacy question affecting adults as well. 
This is where India must proceed carefully. Age verification should not become an excuse for platforms to collect copies of Aadhaar, passports, facial images or other sensitive information from millions of users. The solution to excessive data collection cannot be more excessive data collection.

A privacy-preserving system should answer only the question a platform genuinely needs answered: is this user above the required age threshold? The platform should not need the person’s date of birth, address or identity document. It should receive a trusted “yes” or “no” signal from an appropriate verifier, while the underlying proof remains protected. This reduces the risks of identity theft, misuse, profiling and breaches.

India’s Digital Personal Data Protection framework already gives the country a foundation that differs from a pure access ban. It treats anyone under 18 as a child for data-protection purposes, requires verifiable parental consent before processing a child’s personal data, and restricts tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising directed at children. This shifts the debate from merely asking whether a child can open an account to asking what a platform may do with the child’s data after access is granted.

That distinction matters. Consent is only the front door. A parent may permit a child to use an educational community, messaging service or social platform, but that permission should not become a licence to create a permanent behavioural profile. It should not justify tracking the  child across applications, optimising engagement through manipulative design or retaining data indefinitely.

This is also why parental consent cannot become a checkbox exercise. Platforms need a credible way to establish that the person giving consent is an adult and has a legitimate relationship with the child, without gathering more data than necessary. Parents must be able to review, modify or withdraw consent. Behind the screen, the platform must apply that decision across advertising, recommendations, analytics, data sharing, retention and deletion.

Burden Of Child Safety Must Shift To Platforms

The operational challenge is substantial. A child may use a shared family device, register with an incorrect age, access an account created by an adult or move between applications and devices. Determined teenagers will test and circumvent controls. No law can eliminate this entirely. But imperfection is not a reason for inaction; it is a reason to avoid pretending that a single age gate is the complete solution.

The burden must increasingly move from families to platforms. Parents cannot audit recommendation engines, understand every third-party software component or detect when a platform has inferred a child’s interests and vulnerabilities. Platforms, however, know how their products are designed, what data they collect and which features maximise time spent. They are best placed to introduce safer defaults, restrict contact from unknown adults, disable targeted advertising, limit addictive features and respond quickly when harm is reported.

India should therefore resist framing the choice as either a blanket ban or unrestricted access. A proportionate model can recognise that not all digital services present the same risk. A private messaging tool, an educational forum and an algorithmically amplified public feed do not operate in the same way. Regulation should consider the nature of the platform, the data it collects, its design features and the likelihood of harm.

We must also remember that social media is not only entertainment. For many young people, it is where they learn, create, seek support and participate in communities. Overbroad restrictions can isolate vulnerable children or push them towards less visible and less regulated corners of the internet. Child safety should not require children to surrender all privacy, access and agency.

France’s decision will accelerate India’s debate, and state-level action suggests restrictions are no longer a distant possibility. But India’s scale, digital diversity and identity infrastructure make the consequences of poor implementation much larger.

The goal should not simply be to keep children off platforms until a particular birthday. It should be to make digital services prove that they are safe, age-appropriate and accountable before they profit from a child’s attention and data.

India may introduce stronger age-based limits. If it does, success will not be measured by the announcement of a ban. It will be measured by whether children are safer, parents have meaningful control, platforms can demonstrate compliance, and every user’s privacy remains intact.

We should not build a system in which people repeatedly reveal who they are simply to prove how old they are. We should build one in which platforms continuously prove that they deserve the trust of the children and families they serve.