SC says no to plea for barring kids below 13 from using social media

(*13*)
Picture used for consultant function solely.
| Picture Credit score: AP

The Supreme Court docket on Friday (April 4, 2025) refused to study a plea looking for to prohibit youngsters below 13 from using social media, observing it was a coverage situation.

A Bench of Justices B. R. Gavai and Augustine George Masih, nevertheless, granted a liberty to the petitioner to make a illustration to the authority involved.

The plea referred to the extreme bodily, psychological and psychological influence of social media on younger minds and sought a route to mandate introduction of strong age verification programs, like biometric authentication, to regulate youngsters’s entry to social media platforms.

“It’s a coverage matter. You ask Parliament to enact the regulation,” the Bench advised the petitioner’s counsel.

The Bench went on, “We, due to this fact, eliminate the petition with liberty to the petitioner to make a illustration to the respondent authority.”

In case the petitioner made a illustration, it will be thought of inside eight weeks, the court docket mentioned.

The plea, filed by Zep Basis, sought instructions to the Centre and others to incorporate provisions of obligatory parental controls for youngsters between 13 and 18 years, together with real-time monitoring instruments, strict age verification and content material restrictions within the draft Digital Private Knowledge Safety Guidelines.

The petition, filed via advocate Mohini Priya, additional sought implementation of strict penalties for social media platforms failing to adjust to youngsters safety rules.

Calling it a “urgent concern”, the petitioner’s counsel mentioned, “This isn’t a difficulty about parental supervision. It wants some prohibit age verification mechanism.”

The plea was acknowledged to define the unregulated and unrestricted entry of youngsters below 13 years of age to social media platforms, inflicting an “unprecedented psychological well being disaster” in India.

India, the plea mentioned, was witnessing an alarming surge in melancholy, anxiousness, self-harm and suicide charges amongst youngsters, with overwhelming empirical proof establishing a direct correlation between extreme social media utilization and declining psychological well being.

“Analysis research conclusively show that minors who’re overexposed to social media undergo from heightened psychological misery, social isolation, addiction-like dependency, and extreme cognitive impairments,” it added.

Unchecked digital engagement of minors was akin to a public well being emergency, the plea mentioned, and as per authoritative reviews, India had over 462 million lively social media customers, protecting 32.2% of the full inhabitants, with cell connectivity reaching 78%.

The plea mentioned round 30% of the nation’s inhabitants contains youngsters between the age of 4 and 18 years.

It referred to reviews from Maharashtra, to point out 17% of youngsters aged 9-17 years spent over six hours each day both on social media or gaming platforms.

The plea sought a route to social media platforms to implement algorithmic safeguards to forestall the concentrating on of minors with addictive content material apart from a route to the authorities to launch a nationwide digital literacy marketing campaign to educate dad and mom, academics and college students on the dangerous results of extreme social media consumption.