Should the burden of protecting children online rest with parents, the state, or platforms? Examine the ethical issues involved.

Greece has banned social media for children under 15. Its law makes age verification compulsory and penalises companies that fail to comply [1]. This shifts duty away from parental supervision and towards platform accountability enforced by the state. Ethically, no single actor can carry the burden alone. It should be shared, with the most weight on whoever designs the risk.

Parents: Autonomy vs Capacity

• Family autonomy: parents know their child best. India's DPDP Rules, 2025 require verifiable parental consent before a child's data is processed [2].
• Information asymmetry: parents cannot see how platform algorithms work. Where digital literacy is low, consent becomes a formality and some families are left less protected than others.

State: Guardian vs Paternalism

• Parens patriae (the state as guardian): under Article 39(f), the state must protect children from exploitation.
• Proportionality: the evidence on harm is mixed. OECD data show that moderate users do better academically, and harm rises with heavy use. The average 15-year-old spends almost 35 hours a week on social media [3]. A blanket ban also removes the benefits of moderate use, so it may fail the Puttaswamy test of necessity.
• Enforceability: children get around Australia's under-16 ban using VPNs and proxy accounts [3].

Platforms: Profit vs Duty of Care

• Causal responsibility: platforms build engagement-maximising features such as endless feeds and night-time alerts. Since they create the risk, they should bear the burden of reducing it.
• Weak self-regulation: only 2 of 50 online services used by children checked age properly when an account was created [4].
• Privacy dilemma: strict verification makes platforms collect identity documents or face scans. This goes against data minimisation.

Way Forward: Shared Responsibility

• Platforms: design for safety. Limit risky features, as Utah does by capping algorithmic feeds [3], and use token-based age checks that confirm age without sharing identity data [2].
• State: require audits, offer appeals against wrong blocking, and review the law within a fixed period, as Australia does [3].
• Parents and schools: teach digital literacy and agree rules with children instead of only blocking access.

The burden should be shared, with the most weight on platforms. Platforms should design for safety, the state should regulate in proportion to the evidence, and parents should guide their children rather than just monitor them. This approach follows the Constitution's commitment to child welfare under Article 39(f), the right to privacy upheld in Puttaswamy, and the "best interests of the child" principle.