Karnataka wants to ban U-16s from social media; industry, experts sceptical

Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah unveiled the proposal along with the state’s budget for FY27 on Friday, but did not share details.

Lawyers and policymakers Mint spoke with said such a state-level demographic-specific ban could require intrusive age-verification systems and may be impractical, since many children access social media through adults’ devices and accounts.

Further, such a ban may also clash with the Centre’s data-privacy framework, and go against the principles of minimal data sharing put forth in the Digital Personal Data Privacy (DPDP) Act that was notified last year.

“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’,” a spokesperson for Meta Platforms Inc said in response to Mint’s queries.

“We’ll comply with social media bans where they are enforced, but with teens using nearly 40 apps every week, targeting a handful of companies won’t keep them safe. Bans should apply equally across the many apps teens use,” the spokesperson added.

A set of queries sent to Priyank Kharge, the state’s IT minister, did not immediately receive responses.

Notably, India provides the biggest user base for Meta Platforms’ popular social media apps Facebook (403 million monthly active users or MAUs), Instagram (350 million) and WhatsApp (532 million), as per third-party statistics platform Business of Apps.

In India, the Economic Survey of 2026 by the ministry of finance underlined the need for such restrictions, stating that “younger users are more vulnerable to compulsive use and harmful content”.

Last week, on the sidelines of India AI Impact Summit 2026, Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw added that the ministry of electronics and IT (Meity) is “in talks with all platforms” for implementing age-based social media restrictions.

According to a 2025 estimate by CyberPeace Foundation, India has 900 million internet users, of which 14% are under the age of 18, which translates to 126 million users.

Karnataka’s proposal comes after a 20 February crackdown by Meity on AI-generated deepfakes being notified on social media and AI firms. Earlier, on 8 December, the Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) also floated a consultation paper for a regulatory mechanism on the use of copyrighted material in India to train AI by Big Tech.

Bharti highlighted the case of under-16 social media regulations in the UK, where an initial proposal to implement such a ban has led to a nationwide survey. Starting this month, the UK government is seeking views from all parties on the right possible measures to reduce social media exposure for adolescents and children under 16 years of age.

“There is no such survey that has so far been conducted in India, which is a necessity for such a law to be implemented,” she added.

Dhruv Garg, a technology lawyer and founder of policy think-tank India Governance and Policy Project (Igap), added that implementing such strictures in India is a major legal hurdle.

“On one hand, IT is a Centre subject, and everything from the IT rules to the DPDP Act have all been legislated by the Centre. There will be conversations around the constitutionality of state-level bans on social media. More importantly, questions rise around how such a law can be practically implemented,” he added.

“India is a country of one household, one device for the most part, if you don’t take into account the top 5% of metropolitan residents. This means that most users have access to social media through an adult’s phone, on an adult’s network registration. How do you crack down on such a user, given that on social media, most age verifications depend on voluntary disclosures?” Garg said.

Bharti further said that Karnataka may consider regulating social media harms under brackets of health and safety, “which is the only way this topic may come under a state’s ambit”.