In the Emmy Award-winning series 'Adolescence', the parents of 13-year-old Jamie (played by Owen Cooper) struggle with guilt and helplessness after their son is arrested for murdering a classmate. The show, while fictional, shines a harsh light on cyberbullying, online alienation, and the psychological pressures of growing up in a hyperconnected world. It also leaves viewers with a haunting question -- should social media be off-limits for children, or should there be a clear minimum age to join it?
That question has now leapt from living rooms to legislatures. Around the world, policy-makers are treating children's social media use as a public-health and rights issue -- putting it in the same bracket as alcohol and tobacco regulation.
Several European nations have moved from mere advisories to legally enforced age limits and parental-consent rules. India, too, is drawing up new guidelines that could dramatically change how minors access the internet.
But which approach truly protects children -- a complete ban, stricter age checks, verified parental consent, or better digital education? And how can India learn from Europe's evolving experiment to strike the right balance between protection and access?
Let's break down what Europe is planning, what global research says is the "right age" for social media, and what a practical roadmap for India might look like.
What The Pew Research Says About 'The Right Age'
Large, reputable surveys do not point to a single magical birthday when a child is automatically ready for social media. What researchers do show, repeatedly, is that the risks rise when children begin earlier, and that parents and experts often disagree about readiness.
Pew Research Center does not recommend a specific age for a social media ban for children, but highlights that most platforms require users to be 13 years or older.
The American think tank says older teens report much higher, near-constant use of smartphones and social platforms; younger teens and tweens use them less but still substantially. Parents tend to be far more worried about social media's effects on mental health than teens themselves, and a strong plurality of adults favour parental consent requirements for minors using social platforms.
Medical and child-health bodies bring a more prescriptive note. The American Academy of Paediatrics (AAP) - the largest professional association recommends waiting until at least age 13 before opening accounts on mainstream social platforms, while stressing that maturity, family dynamics and supervision matter more than a calendar date.
The AAP also points out specific harms seen when children start too young -- sleep disruption, bullying and early exposure to risky content.
Put simply: the research consensus leans toward delaying independent social-media use until the early teen years (around 13), combined with parental involvement and safeguards -- not unfettered access at younger ages.
What Europe Is Doing?
Europe is moving faster than many parts of the world towards strict age protections, but the path is not uniform.
Recently, a report adopted by the European Parliament's Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee recommended that no child under 13 be allowed to access social media, with or without parental permission.
The European lawmakers have also called for fines and bans on platforms that flout the bloc's rules on protecting minors under the Digital Services Act (DSA), an AFP report mentioned.
Some countries set concrete minimum age for autonomous accounts (often 13), others require parental consent up to 16, and a few -- driven by growing alarm about mental health and online harms -- are pushing for even stronger rules. Belgium, for instance, requires users to be at least 13 to create an account without parental permission. Germany typically permits 13-16-year-olds with parental consent for certain services. At the EU level, lawmakers and MEPs have debated proposals for an EU-wide digital minimum age of 16, with lower allowances (age 13) if parental consent is given; they are also testing age-verification tools to enforce limits.
Better Internet For Children
Practical enforcement is the tricky part. Platforms historically have relied on self-reported birthdays; age verification systems and identity checks are getting better, but they raise privacy, cost and exclusion concerns. Critics point out one perverse result: if parental consent systems require digital ID or literacy, they risk excluding children of disadvantaged families from safe, supervised online spaces while pushing others to lie about their age.
How Other Countries Square Policy & Protection
Belgium: Minimum age 13 to sign up without parental permission. Platforms must respect this limit.
Germany: Many services permit 13-16 with parental consent; calls for better enforcement continue.
EU (proposals): MEPs and committees have advocated an EU-wide approach that would set baseline ages (13-16) while piloting age-verification tools. The goal: harmonise protections across member states.
Australia & UK: Both have introduced or considered tougher rules on platform responsibility, age checks and content moderation -- though exact age cut-offs and mechanisms vary and are evolving.
Countries are treating social-media access for minors as a regulatory problem requiring platform responsibility, not merely parental guidance.
India's Policy Moves: Parental Consent & Child Data Protections
According to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), more than 57% of children in the 14-16 age group use smartphones for educational purposes, while 76% of them use the device for accessing social media. The ASER 2024 is a nationwide rural household survey that reached 6,49,491 children in 17,997 villages across 605 rural districts in India.
Though the governments have traditionally regulated alcohol and tobacco through age limits, licencing, pricing, and public-health campaigns, digital policy, is a newer territory.
Under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 and its draft rules, India is moving to treat children (defined as under 18) as a sensitive category: platforms processing a child's personal data must obtain verifiable parental consent and prioritise child well-being in design. Draft rules released in early 2025 explicitly require parental consent for social-media access for those under 18, and mandate stricter handling and deletion of children's data.
That's a major shift: India's proposal sets the threshold at 18 for requiring consent -- higher than many European baselines -- and ties platform obligations to data protection. The government argues this is necessary to safeguard children's privacy and mental health. But the rules also risk practical problems: how do you verify parental consent for families without digital ID? How will enforcement work in rural and low-connectivity areas? Critics warn of digital exclusion if consent systems rely on tools unavailable to many parents.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court in April refused to entertain a plea seeking a statutory prohibition on social usage on children below the age of 13. A bench comprising Justices B R Gavai and Augustine George Masih dismissed the petition, asserting that such a restriction would require a legislative enactment, a Business Standard report mentioned.
Is A Social Media Ban For Children Comparable To Alcohol & Tobacco Controls?
On the face of it, yes and no. Like tobacco and underage alcohol, early social media exposure can have measurable harms: disrupted sleep, increased anxiety or depressive symptoms, exposure to bullying and harmful content, and impacts on attention and learning. Unlike cigarettes and alcohol, social media is also a tool for learning, social connection and civic engagement -- and for many families it is a gateway to education and safety information.
Policy tools overlap: Age limits, parental consent, licencing (platform obligations), public-education campaigns, and enforcement. But there are crucial differences:
Nature of harm: Tobacco and alcohol cause well-defined, physical health harms with long causal chains that justify near-blanket prohibitions for minors. Social media harms are multi-dimensional -- mental health risks for some users, clear benefits for others -- making one-size-fits-all bans harder to justify.
Access and equity: Banning access risks shutting out disadvantaged youth from educational content or support networks. Tobacco/alcohol bans do not carry the same upside of access.
Enforcement practicality: Age verification for online platforms is technologically and logistically challenging and risks privacy trade-offs; regulating sales of cigarettes and spirits is simpler to enforce in the offline world.
Rights & agency: Online speech and access sit in a different legal and rights framework than controlled substances; bans must balance child protection with information access and free expression.
So, while the intent behind regulating youth access to social media mirrors alcohol/tobacco control -- protect young people -- the methods need to be more nuanced.
What The Evidence Recommends?
Research and child-health bodies suggest a balanced approach:
Delay independent access until early teens: Most experts recommend waiting until around 13 for mainstream social accounts, with close supervision before and after that age. The evidence shows sharper risks for children who begin very early.
Parental consent and platform duties: Platforms should be required to verify age ranges and offer age-appropriate defaults (stricter privacy, limited recommendation algorithms) for teens. India's draft consent requirement is aligned with this principle, though the implementation needs careful design to avoid exclusion.
Design for wellbeing: Platforms can be required to reduce addictive features for minors, stop algorithmic amplification of harmful content, and offer easy parental controls. European conversations are already pushing in this direction.
Public education & digital literacy: Laws alone will not protect children; sustained programmes in schools for media literacy, family guidance and teacher training are essential. Evidence shows strong parental relationships and critical thinking reduce harms.
What Can India Learn From Europe?
A pragmatic minimum age with parental consent: Europe's debate between 13 and 16 is instructive. A workable Indian approach could set 13 as a practical floor for unsupervised accounts, combined with verifiable parental consent up to 16 or 18 for additional protections -- but only if consent methods are inclusive (not reliant solely on high-end digital IDs). This balances child development science with digital realities.
Better Internet for children: Mandate age-appropriate defaults and platform duty of care
Platforms to switch to 'teen defaults': Private accounts, restricted algorithmic recommendations, time limits and easy report mechanisms. Europe's proposals to force platform design changes are a model.
Protect against exclusion: If parental consent mechanisms depend on DigiLocker-style IDs or literacy, many families will be left out. India should provide alternative verification routes (school attestations, local authority confirmations) to prevent digital denial of access. Evidence from implementation pilots shows this matters in practice.
Couple rules with outreach: Launch scaled national digital-literacy campaigns for parents, teachers and children -- the analogue counterweight to any digital regulation. The AAP and Pew findings both emphasise the role of parental supervision and education.
Monitor, measure, adapt: Treat the policy as an iterative experiment. Mandate regular data reporting from platforms on child engagement and harms, and fund longitudinal studies to track mental-health outcomes, much as public-health surveillance tracks alcohol and tobacco harms.
What To Conclude?
A blanket "ban" on children's social media would be blunt and risky -- it could protect some while excluding and isolating others. But doing nothing is not an option either: evidence shows early, unsupervised social-media use correlates with measurable harms for many children. The best path borrows the rigour of tobacco/alcohol regulation (clear age thresholds, duty of care, enforcement) and marries it with the nuance of child development science (delay until early teens, parental supervision, digital literacy).
India's draft rules on parental consent are a major step, but their value will depend on implementation details that avoid exclusion, protect privacy, and force platforms to design for young users' well-being.
If India gets the balance right -- inclusive verification, age-sensitive defaults, education and strong platform duties -- it can build a model that protects children without cutting them off from the educational and civic benefits of the digital world.