Discuss the ethical responsibilities of technology companies in designing platforms used by minors. Should design-based liability be the primary regulatory tool?

The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child's General Comment No. 25 (2021) affirms that children's rights apply fully in the digital environment, placing duties on States and businesses [2]. With one in three internet users worldwide being a child [5], platform design is an ethical choice, not merely a commercial one.

Ethical responsibilities of technology companies

• Best interests of the child: embedding child-rights impact assessment into product design, rather than treating safety as an afterthought [2].
• Meaningful consent and data minimisation: minors cannot give informed consent; India's DPDP Act, 2023 (Section 9) requires verifiable parental consent and bars behavioural tracking and targeted advertising directed at children [3].
• Non-exploitation of developmental vulnerability: adolescent risk-taking outpaces impulse control; infinite scroll, streaks and "like" counts monetise this asymmetry.
• Transparency and duty of care: due-diligence and grievance-redress obligations on intermediaries under the IT Rules, 2021 [4].

The case for design-based liability

• It addresses the cause rather than the symptom — content takedown is reactive, design is systemic.
• It yields enforceable, measurable remedies: Meta's 2026 settlement with a coalition of US attorneys general, worth up to $17.1 billion, mandates teen daily-use limits, night-time blocks, enhanced age assurance and parental tools [1].
• It shifts the burden from the child and parent to the better-resourced designer.

Why it cannot be the sole tool

• It casts teens as passive victims, ignoring their agency and peer-driven migration across apps — curbs on one platform displace rather than end use.
• Age-assurance mandates raise surveillance, privacy and digital-exclusion risks.
• Over-restriction can erode children's participation and information rights recognised in GC-25 [2].

Design-based liability should therefore be the anchor of regulation, not its entirety. Paired with data-protection safeguards, digital literacy, parental engagement and genuine consultation with adolescents themselves, it can make the digital environment both safe and empowering — the balance the Convention on the Rights of the Child envisages.