Examine the need for and challenges in regulating minors' access to social media platforms in India, referencing global best practices.

The WHO/HBSC study found problematic social media use among adolescents rose from 7% (2018) to 11% (2022), with 12% at risk of problematic gaming [1]. India's debate sharpened with the SHIELD Bill, 2025, a private member's Bill seeking to bar under-13s from social media and gaming accounts without verified parental consent [2]. Regulation is necessary, but its design and enforcement are contested.

Why regulation is needed

• Mental health: addiction-like symptoms — loss of control, withdrawal, neglect of other activities — are now measurable at scale among 11–15 year-olds [1].
• Addictive design: recommendation algorithms are built to maximise engagement and amplify narrow or extreme content, a harm the SHIELD Bill's sponsor cites as its rationale [2].
• Commercial exploitation: behavioural tracking and targeted advertising at children, which Section 9, DPDP Act 2023 already prohibits alongside mandating verifiable parental consent [3].
• Enforcement gap: statutory bars exist on paper; self-declared ages let minors bypass them.

Global best practices

• Australia set a minimum age of 16, effective 10 December 2025, placing the duty on platforms to take reasonable, privacy-preserving steps to verify age, with penalties for failure [4].
• Its Minister–eSafety Commissioner design lets covered platforms be notified administratively, avoiding fresh legislation for each new app [4].

Challenges

• Age verification vs privacy: robust checks risk mass identity collection, colliding with the right to privacy and data-minimisation.
• Consent capacity: "verified parental consent" is weak where digital literacy is low; DPDP Rules require only due diligence that the consenting person is an adult [3].
• Rights of adolescents: blanket bans restrict access to information, learning and expression, and push minors to unregulated spaces.
• Legislative route: only 14 private members' Bills have become law since 1952, none since 1970, so SHIELD is agenda-setting rather than imminent law [5].

A calibrated, design-focused approach — enforcing DPDP's existing child-data safeguards, mandating privacy-preserving age assurance and default safety settings, and pairing them with digital-literacy programmes — offers a better path than prohibition alone. Protecting the child online is finally a test of the State's parens patriae duty under Article 39(f).