Karnataka moves toward banning social media access for users under 16 in India

Karnataka, the Indian state that includes Bengaluru, is moving toward banning social media use for children under the age of 16, aligning itself with a wider global push to limit young people’s access to online platforms, even as concerns remain over how such a move would be enforced and whether it would actually work.

Chief Minister Siddaramaiah announced the plan during the state budget speech on Friday. “To prevent the adverse effects on children from the use of mobile phones, the use of social media will be prohibited for children under the age of 16,” he said. He did not, however, explain how the proposed restriction would be implemented or monitored.

According to two sources at separate tech companies, the Karnataka government did not consult the industry before making the announcement.

Authorities in several countries have increasingly moved to limit children’s use of social media after years of concern about the impact of platforms such as TikTok, Facebook, Snapchat, and Instagram on young users and other vulnerable groups. Australia became the first country to introduce a ban on social media for teenagers last December, and several other governments are now considering comparable measures.

Indonesia said on Friday that it would limit access to what it called “high-risk platforms”, including YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, and Roblox, for users under 16. Malaysia has likewise indicated that it is studying similar restrictions.

The issue has also started gaining momentum more broadly in India. Officials in Goa and Andhra Pradesh have recently said they are examining comparable limits. In December, the Madras High Court urged the central government to consider restrictions similar to those adopted in Australia for children’s social media access. A month later, India’s chief economic adviser, V. Anantha Nageswaran, suggested age-based limits for access to social media platforms that he described as “predatory.”

A Meta spokesperson said the company supports measures that give parents greater control over how teenagers use apps, while warning against sweeping bans on social media.

“Governments considering bans should be careful not to push teens toward less safe, unregulated sites, or logged-out experiences that bypass important protections — like the default safeguards we offer in Instagram’s Teen Accounts,” the spokesperson said.

Meta said it would follow bans once they are proven. Still, sheargued thatt targeting only a limited number of platforms may not deliver the intended safety benefits, since teenagers use around 40 apps on average.

Legal experts questioned whether a state government in India has the authority to impose such restrictions. Aparajita Bharti, founding partner at the tech and public policy consulting firm The Quantum Hub, said the announcement currently appears more of an expression of intent than a fully developed policy.

“It is unclear whether the Karnataka state government has the legislative authority to undertake such measures,” Bharti said. She added that lawmakers should take into account India’s specific realities, including shared device use and the country’s digital divide, rather than “blindly follow” models used in Western nations.

She also said it is still unclear whether Australia’s ban will be effective and suggested that broader online safety measures may be necessary.

Kazim Rizvi, founding director of New Delhi-based think tank The Dialogue, said sweeping internet-related regulation is largely handled at the federal level in India, which may limit the ability of individual states to impose platform-wide restrictions on their own.

“A state can certainly articulate the policy objective of child safety, but a binding, platform-facing ban would be much harder for a state to sustain on its own without running into Centre-State and constitutional questions,” he said.

Digital rights groups have also voiced concern over blanket curbs on children’s social media access. Reacting to Karnataka’s proposal, the Internet Freedom Foundation said such measures raise difficult questions around enforcement and may require age-verification systems that create new privacy risks for users.

The organisation also warned that broad restrictions could end up limiting children’s access to information and freedom of expression, while potentially worsening India’s digital gender divide if families use such policies to keep girls offline. “Child safety online demands serious, evidence-based policy, not headline-driven prohibitions,” the group said.