Monitors of India’s laggard K-12 education system are almost unanimous that India, which hosts the world’s largest child population of 350 million under 15 years of age, has a snowballing problem of rising social media addiction among children, especially urban adolescents – Baishali Mukherjee

Traditionally the start of the globally dominant Gregorian calender New Year is the time for making new resolutions and new beginnings. People worldover resolve to put the setbacks and disappointments of the past 12 months behind them and venture once more unto the breach with expectation of greater success.

• October 24, 2023. A group of 33 US states including California and New York sued Meta Platforms Inc, which owns Facebook and Instagram, for harming children and young people’s mental health by deliberately designing features on Instagram and Facebook that are addictive for children.
• May 16, 2024. The European Union opened a new investigation into Meta’s Facebook and Instagram for failing to protect children attracted to their platforms, a violation that could result in fines of up to 6 percent of the company’s annual worldwide revenue.
• June 24, 2024. Lawsuits were filed by 45 US states against Meta for not doing enough to keep children safe online. The lawsuits alleged that Meta knew that millions of children under 13 years of age are hooked on Facebook and Instagram but did nothing to deter them.
• October 8, 2024. A bipartisan group of 14 attorneys general across the US filed lawsuits against TikTok, the short-form video social media app owned by Chinese company ByteDance, alleging that the platform has “addicted” young people and harmed their mental health.

Over the past two years, the evidence against pervasive social media — Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, X, Instagram, and TikTok — for visiting havoc on children and adolescents’ mental health has grown into a mountain difficult to ignore. Social media platforms are accused of hooking and addicting children especially adolescents, through clever algorithms designed to keep them engaged for “as long as possible,” endangering their mental health; surreptitiously collecting personal data and wilfully failing to protect them against cyberbullying.

Comments Nancy DeAngelis, Director of Behavioural Health, Jefferson Health — Abington, USA: “Social media is designed to hook our brains, and teens are especially susceptible to its addictiveness. Social media platforms drive surges of dopamine to the brain to keep consumers coming back over and over again. The shares, likes and comments on these platforms trigger the brain’s reward center, resulting in a high similar to the one people feel when gambling or using drugs.”

While several countries around the world such as the US, UK and France have hauled up popular social media platforms to court and/or issued guidelines to restrict their use by children, Australia has gone a step further. On November 29, it became the first nation worldwide to enact legislation banning the use of social media by children under 16 years of age. The legislation unanimously passed by Australia’s parliament makes social media platforms liable to pay fines of up to A$50 million (Rs.272 crore) for systemic failure to prevent children below 16 from holding social media accounts.

Perhaps inspired by Australia, on January 3 Government of India released the draft Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 for public comment and feedback under which social media use by children will be regulated. Although New Delhi hasn’t yet gone the whole hog and banned social media use by children, the draft DPDP Rules require children below age 18 to obtain parental consent to open social media accounts. To verify consent, parents’ identity and age will have to be validated and verified through voluntarily provided identity documents “issued by an entity entrusted by law or the government,” say the draft rules. To oversee compliance, the Union government has proposed establishing a Data Protection Board, which will function as a fully digital regulatory body. A penalty of up to Rs.250 crore is proposed for breaches by social media companies.

Monitors of India’s laggard K-12 education system are unanimous that India, which hosts the world’s largest child population of 350 million under 15 years of age, has a snowballing problem of rising social media addiction among children, especially urban adolescents. A recent study in The Lancet says that one in three children in India use social media, with 11 percent showing signs of extreme addiction, including withdrawal symptoms when smartphone access is restricted.

Another survey conducted by the Bengaluru-based Baatu Technologies, which provides parents digital child safety solutions, says that 60 percent of children aged 5-16 years exhibit behaviour indicating digital and social media dependency. This against several recent research studies warning that prolonged use of social media is likely to increase the risk of depression, anxiety, and psychological distress (Stanford Law, 2024). Teens with the highest social media usage rate their overall mental health as poor or very poor (41 percent), compared with only 23 percent of those with the lowest use (American Psychological Association, 2024).

“The social media universe has become a huge unregulated space with lurking dangers. Addiction apart, children are becoming easy targets of sexual predators and financial scammers. The government of India’s new Digital Personal Data Protection Rules, 2025 requiring parental consent for children to open social media accounts, is welcome. But beyond this, we need to educate parents about regularly monitoring children’s social media usage. Children should be permitted access to specific, safe online spaces under constant parental supervision,” says Gurumurthy Kasinathan, Director IT4Change, a Bengaluru-based NGO engaged in disseminating technology, education and social justice.

Parenting coaches and experts believe that India’s DPDP Rules mandating parental consent is a better option than Australia’s outright social media ban for children under 16. Roma Kumar, Co-Chairperson at the Institute for Psychiatry, Sir Ganga Ram Hospital, Delhi, says that social media is integral to modern life and living and can be a rich source of information and enables adolescents to access valuable information and learning.

“It’s impractical to ban social media. Everyone is on it either for personal or business reasons. Any outright ban will force children and teens to bypass restrictions through fake profiles creation and secretive usage, leading to unsafe interaction and unmonitored behaviour, increasing risks instead of reducing them. Instead, parents should persistently preach responsible use of social media and monitor children’s online activities. Especially in educationally under-served countries, early exposure to social media equips adolescents for future educational and professional environments. Moreover, social media has become an important communication medium among youth. A blanket ban could exacerbate loneliness, exclusion, and anxiety about missing out, harming their mental health. It will hinder social development, limiting opportunities for youngsters to build self-awareness, empathy, and resilience,” says Kumar.

While reasonable restriction and parental supervision are important, mental health experts underscore the need to address underlying causes driving excessive social media use by children. According to Dr. Prerna Kohli, a Gurugram-based clinical psychologist & founder of MindTribe, a mental health organisation, among the most widely recognised causes of social media addiction are low self-esteem, personal dissatisfaction, depression, hyperactivity, and lack of affection, a deficiency that adolescents frequently try to replace with ‘likes’. “Adolescents are at highest risk of becoming addicted to social media because they tend to be impulsive, want peer and social acceptance, and there’s a strong desire to reaffirm their group identity,” says Dr. Kohli highlighting that social media dependency leads to adolescents becoming irritable, insecure, isolationist and retreat from real life and face-to-face interaction. “Poor quality sleep, loss of appetite and mental health problems such as anxiety and depression are inevitable outcomes of social media addiction,” she adds.

Kohli believes that as with all addictions, prevention is better than cure. “Preventing social media addiction requires a balanced approach from parents and educators. We need educational campaigns that teach parents and children how to navigate social media safely, recognise harmful content, and accord high priority to mental health and well-being. Parents need to take the lead in setting boundaries on social media usage and most important, discuss the pros and cons of social media usage respectfully — without being preachy and judgemental — with children. Simultaneously, they must encourage participation in non-digital activities such as sports and other extra-curriculars like local community engagement. These are healthy alternatives to excessive social media usage. In this day and age, parents have a duty to model healthy social media habits,” adds Kohli.

Likewise, Dr. Pallavi Rao Chaturvedi, a Bhopal-based parenting coach and the founder of one of India’s fastest-growing online parenting platforms ‘Get, Set, Parent with Pallavi’, recommends the middle path. She supports a mix of parental education and government regulation. “Australia has a full-time eSafety Commissioner, the world’s first government regulatory agency committed to keeping its citizens including children, safe online. One of the commissioner’s primary mandates is to provide online safety education to children and youth, parents and educators through outreach programmes. We need a similar agency in India. Social media has become the primary communication medium for people born in the new millennium and provides a shared cultural space for adolescents to keep up with trends, music, memes, etc. Banning social media access can lead to isolation and disconnection from peers and global conversations. Through a mix of parental supervision and government regulation, we can enable children to benefit from social media and minimise its risks,” says Chaturvedi.

Although parent education is critical to promoting responsible social media usage by children and adolescents, education institutions also have a role to play in teaching online safety. Comments Seema Sapru, principal of the CISCE-affiliated The Heritage School, Kolkata: “Excessive screen time and social media use by children adversely impact learning and academic outcomes, apart from damaging their mental well-being. Schools and teachers have an important role to play in educating children about online safety and social media dependency dangers. In our school, we have made it a point to hold regular sessions on online safety for our students.”

Madhumita Sengupta, principal of the CBSE-affiliated BDM International School, Kolkata, concurs. “The effects of social media addiction are visible in the classroom. Addicted children have poor focus and concentration and exhibit disinterest in academics. Schools must collaborate with parents to educate children about the dangers of excessive social media use. Parents and schools must group to force social media companies to abandon addictive algorithms and create an ecosystem of informed, mindful and responsible social media usage,” says Sengupta.

Against the backdrop of parents and teachers figuring out how best to protect children from social media addiction, cybersecurity experts are sceptical about the effectiveness of the Union government’s new DPDP Rules for children under 18 years requiring prior parental consent to open social media accounts. “This rule is unimplementable and impractical. Children are required to declare they are under-age and get parental consent. In reality, most children will not self-declare they are under-age and will log in with fake age details and bypass the system. Moreover, under the Rules it’s not mandatory but voluntary for parents to upload their government issued ID proofs for age-verification and consent. No parent will voluntarily upload these documents because of fear of data theft. It’s most likely the parental consent rule will remain on paper,” says Sandeep Sengupta, a Kolkata-based cybersecurity expert and founder of the Indian School of Anti Hacking.

Ritesh Bhatia, also a cybercrime investigator and founder of V4Web Cybersecurity, Mumbai, suggests the DPDP Rules should demand greater accountability from social media corporations. “Social media companies need to be made responsible and accountable for what happens on their platforms. The onus of implementing privacy and security guard rails and investigating every child abuse complaint should devolve on social media companies. They have the reach and technology to identify abusers. It’s also a good idea to have an independent social media regulatory agency to audit social media companies. Bans and greater restrictions will lead to children accessing the dark net,” he warns.

Clearly as the new age of sophisticated campaigns to hook hundreds of millions of children and teens to social media platforms for power and profit dawns, there are no easy solutions to protecting children against the multiplying dangers of social media and the dark net. Cooperation between parents, educators, social media companies and government is required to ideate solutions which include a mix of regulation and safety education. The newly emergent global village must cooperate to raise happy, healthy children.

Meta’s new guidelines for users under 16 years

The US-based transnational megacorp Meta Platforms Inc (annual revenue: Rs.117 lakh crore) has been under fire for harming children and young people’s mental health by deliberately designing features on its Instagram and Facebook that addict children to its platforms. Responding to public opinion last September, the company issued changes to its user policy for children under 16 years.

• All Facebook/Instagram accounts suspected to be held by children under 16 years will be automatically set to private.
• Users below 16 can only be messaged by people they follow or are connected with. Moreover, they can only be tagged or mentioned by people they follow.
• All notifications are disabled between 10 p.m and 7 a.m.
• Prompts to “take a break” after 60 minutes of app use are automatically enabled.
• Parents will be able to see who their children (under 16) are communicating with and the topics they engage with.
• All users under 18 years can select topics of interest to influence content recommendations, giving them more control.
• Parents using supervision will be prompted to approve or deny their teens’ requests to change their default safety and privacy settings to less strict — rather than just being notified of the change.

India’s Draft DPDP Rules 2025

On January 3, the government of India released its draft Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Rules, 2025 to enforce the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023. Salient provisions for public comment and feedback with a time window of February 2:

• Children under 18 years require parental consent to open social media accounts.
• Verification of consent to be done by parents through “voluntary” uploading of government-issued IDs or digital identity tokens such as Digital Lockers.
• Data Protection Board to be established as a fully digital regulatory body responsible for ensuring compliance with the DPDP rules.
• Proposed fines of up to Rs.250 crore for violations by data fiduciaries.
• Data fiduciaries such as healthcare professionals, educational institutions and childcare providers are exempt from certain provisions regarding children’s data, but can only process it for specific activities.
• Consumers have the right to challenge data collection practices and demand clear explanations for data usage.
  

Social media addiction symptoms

Especially among Generation Z (born after 1997) and Generation Alpha (born after 2010) social media addiction is assuming pandemic proportions posing loss of mental equilibrium and well-being.

PW summarises recommendations from mental health experts and parenting coaches on symptoms of children’s social media addiction that parents must watch out for:

• When children are unsettled and irritable if there is no access to the Internet, the social network is down, or it is slower than usual.
• When children check social media first thing in the morning and last at night.
• When they experience stress if their smartphone isn’t at hand to check social media updates.
• When they access social media while walking.
• Feel down when posts are not getting likes, retweets or views.
• Prefer to communicate with friends and family through social media rather than personal interaction.
• Experience urge to share posts on social media too frequently.
• Experience sleep and appetite loss.
• Exhibit disinterest in school/ academics.

 Preventing social media addiction

Some proven strategies to prevent children’s social media addiction:

*  Designate tech-free zones at home and prohibit the use of mobile phones at breakfast, lunch and dinner, and during family discussions.

*  Switch off automatic notifications.

*  Set a minimum time every day for children to participate in offline activities such as sport, reading or music.

*  Delete unnecessary apps and WhatsApp groups.

• Encourage children to develop effective coping mechanisms and strategies to manage stress, anxiety, and frustration.
• Set mutually agreed social media usage time limits. Agree on healthy boundaries to help reorient children’s relationship with social media from escapism and distraction to a tool for enjoyment and information. Encourage and empower them to practice these boundaries on their own.
• Model healthy social media use. It is important for adults to model healthy social media use in their own daily lives.