A blanket ban on social media for under-16s addresses symptoms rather than causes. Critically examine this view in the context of the global regulatory wave and India's existing legal framework.

The 2025–26 regulatory wave — Australia's under-16 ban in force from December 2025 [2], followed by Indonesia and Malaysia — regulates the user rather than the risk-creator. The UN's rebuttal that platforms must be "safe by design" [3] makes the view largely persuasive, though not wholly.

Merit in the view: bans treat symptoms

• Harm lies in design, not access. The UN human rights office (May 2026) attributes child harm to deliberate commercial choices — infinite scroll, autoplay, persistent notifications — and issued a 10-point safe-by-design framework [3].
• Evidence is heterogeneous. No uniform correspondence exists between social media use and harm; vulnerability varies by gender, income, disability and digital literacy — a single age line assumes a uniform risk profile.
• Enforcement is circumventable. The UN warns bans are easily bypassed and push children toward less-monitored spaces [3]; VPNs and parental accounts make compliance performative.
• Age assurance creates new harm. Document or facial-estimation checks collide with data minimisation and risk exclusion, while Article 19(1)(a) and children's UNCRC participation rights are curtailed.

Where the view is overstated

• Australia's Act places the onus on platforms, not children or parents, backed by penalties up to AUD 49.5 million — a cause-side duty in ban form [2].
• The US Kids Off Social Media Act (S.278) pairs an under-13 account bar with restrictions on algorithmic recommendation for under-17s, showing bans and design regulation converging [4].
• Where regulators lack capacity, an age floor raises the default protection immediately.

India's position The DPDP Act, 2023 already regulates causes: child defined as under 18, verifiable parental consent, and a bar on tracking and targeted advertising to children [1]. Gaps persist — no statutory duty of care, algorithmic transparency mandate, or dark-pattern prohibition; and as digital regulation is a Union subject, State-level bans are constitutionally fragile.

India should therefore deepen platform-side obligations under the DPDP architecture — child rights impact assessments, default-safe settings, algorithmic accountability — rather than import a blanket ban. Regulating the risk-creator, not the child, best reconciles Article 21 protection with the child's right to participate in digital life.