Age Verification and Restricting Social Media for Children

Note: The discussion was held under the Chatham House Rule. All quotes have been edited for clarity and brevity. 

MediaNama held a roundtable discussion on May 15, 2026, to discuss a possible framework for integrating proportionality into anonymity and verification, exploring a spectrum for how verification can be rolled out. Various government departments have called for verification, whether to access the internet, make calls, or play online games, in the interest of preventing online harms to children, scams, and spam.

Our objective was to identify:

• Gaps in understanding the harms and benefits of social media.
• Access to knowledge, learning, and participation online.
• The impact on children without alternative access to information or education.
• International approaches and lessons from Australia, Indonesia, and the Age Appropriate Design Code.
• What India can learn from global approaches to age verification.
• Technical and operational issues with age verification systems.
• Different verification models, where verification should take place, and who should conduct it.
• False positives (blocking legitimate users) and false negatives (children bypassing restrictions).
• Data collection implications and alignment with the DPDP Act.
• Implementation challenges in households with shared devices.
• The feasibility of implementing restrictions across state boundaries.
• Implications of building age verification infrastructure at scale.
• Workarounds, including VPNs, borrowed credentials, AI-based age estimation, and movement across encrypted and unencrypted platforms.
• Existing safety mechanisms and possible improvements.
• Age verification versus parental controls versus bans.
• Schools and digital literacy interventions.
• Enforcement responsibilities, penalties, and accountability mechanisms.
• Lessons from regulations that failed at the enforcement stage.
• The Centre’s proposed graded framework (8-12, 12-16, 16-18) and its implications for implementation and platform design.
• What is likely to fail at the implementation and enforcement level.

Download a copy of the event report.

MediaNama’s coverage of the discussion can be found here. 

Executive Summary: 

India is moving towards restricting children’s access to social media. Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have announced age-based bans, Goa is examining similar measures, and the central government is preparing a graded framework with three age brackets: 8–12, 12–16, and 16–18. These proposals follow Australia’s Online Safety Amendment Act, which took effect in December 2025, and reflect growing political pressure to respond to documented harms to children’s mental health and development.

On the online harms: Participants acknowledged that real harms exist. Clinical practitioners reported increases in obesity, depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, online sexual solicitation, and device addiction among children,…