India is both the world’s largest market for digital identity, and among the most complex. The Aadhaar mandatory national digital identity system and India’s digital infrastructure projects put it in a different category than most nations when it comes to identity. Nonetheless, it, too, is now exploring an age restriction for large social media platforms – an indication that the problem is global, and that the companies in the crosshairs have made their presence (and threat) almost universal.
A new report from Medianama, “Age Verification and Restricting Social Media for Children,” summarizes the results of a roundtable held in May, sponsored by Meta and a handful of other tech and design organizations. Given that support, it is no surprise that a conclusion presented early on is that “there was near-unanimous agreement that age verification as currently proposed will not work.”
One can see Meta’s line of thinking threaded through the report. “Blanket bans are a blunt instrument shaped more by political objectives than public policy evidence,” it says. The roundtable questions “the absence of granular, age-disaggregated research establishing causation rather than correlation.”
“Existing studies largely fail to account for pre-existing mental health conditions, family circumstances, and socioeconomic context. The same platforms that expose vulnerable children to harm also provide critical safe spaces for queer children, marginalized girls in remote areas, and those isolated by geography or family circumstance.”
Make it parents’, teachers’ problem
Outside of the U.S., where Meta has made age assurance for social media a free speech issue, this is textbook logic for the Silicon Valley giant. Instagram is not to blame for teens’ mental health issues, it says; they were sick already, and maybe some are poor or abused. Besides which, social media is good for kids, because it helps them connect, and Meta is clearly very concerned for the fate of LGBTQ+ kids and marginalized girls. (Never mind that, in 2025, the company officially loosened hate speech rules across its platforms, allowing previously-banned hateful rhetoric back into the fold; or that the company has failed to prevent its platforms being used for human trafficking.)
Moreover, the discussion loads responsibility onto parents, ignoring the global calls from parents and caregivers to help them help their kids survive the social media jungle. “Beyond platform-level intervention, participants stressed that schools and parents are essential but currently under-equipped. Life skills education, including critical thinking, decision-making, sexuality education, and media literacy, can be mandated through existing mechanisms including the National Education Policy (NEP).”
The report does find time to address the specific Indian context – but then makes a dubious assertion that would seem to skirt evident truths about the country’s digital identity system. “In India, all age verification in practice becomes Aadhaar verification,” it says – “which carries significant privacy costs.” Aadhaar, the world’s largest biometric ID system, is used for verification by more than 1.4 billion people daily. Suggesting that age assurance is unfeasible because the central digital identity system that underpins all of digital life in India has privacy issues is an instance of putting the cart before the horse.
Digital duty of care will only work if platforms actually care
In nations leading on social media age restrictions, such as Australia, the thinking has begun to shift toward a digital duty of care for platforms, targeting platform design choices rather than imposing age assurance requirements. Medianama’s roundtable agrees with this, pushing for a system that addresses the “root causes of harm: hyper-personalized recommendation algorithms, infinite scroll, gamification mechanics, engagement streaks, and dopamine-driven content discovery.”
“These are deliberate design choices, not technical constraints, and are therefore should be regulated.”
Requirements, it says “should include default high-privacy settings, data minimization, geolocation and user profiling disabled by default, prohibition on nudges and gamification, and mandatory absence of all compulsive-use design elements for minor accounts.”
For India, one major challenge is shared devices, and the roundtable says this must be factored into any age assurance scheme. “In India, the majority of children access the internet on a shared family device, not a personal one. Age verification models, parental control mechanisms, and compliance frameworks that assume device ownership by the child are unsuited to the Indian context and must be redesigned from that reality.”
Ultimately, the recommendations are a mix of necessary solutions (“set financial penalties as a percentage of profits, not flat amounts”) and defelections; three of their recommendations amount to, “make kids and parents more digitally literate and aware of the risks.” The roundtable calls for “evidence-based, design-focused regulation that builds children’s agency progressively, places accountability on platforms rather than children, and distributes responsibility across parents, schools, platforms, and the state.”
‘Sanjay, do you know what torture porn is?”
These recommendations tend to read well in the language of formal documentation; literacy and education are hard to argue against. But they take on a different light when the business attire is stripped away. In practical terms, a conversation about digital literacy that actually addresses the risks might go like this:
“Son, on social media, you may find naked images of children generated using AI ‘nudify’ apps. You may find communities of men who gravitate toward misogyny and masculine stereotypes and are trying to recruit you. You might see videos of people getting stabbed or shot; these used to be called ‘snuff films.’ You might encounter sites urging you to kill or disfigure yourself. If you see any of these, don’t look at them.”
The notion that kids (or anyone) have complete control over how they use the internet is specious. Knowledge only goes so far in preventing addition; most people know opiates are highly addictive, but many use them anyway. Recall the roundtable’s conclusion about addictive elements: “these are deliberate design choices.” It’s not as though social media arrived here by accident.
Which brings us to the major shift occurring in age assurance legislation right now. Imposing a digital duty of care on platforms is a good idea that would seem to support the goals of the online safety movement. What it ignores is the clearest truth to emerge from the entire debate: Big Social will use all of its legal, financial and political resources to fight against any regulation that tries to curb its influence. Going to Meta with a plan for design changes that will keep kids safe is like going to a cigarette company with a plan on how to switch out nicotine for cloves.
Any rule that affects the core product – and the bottom line – will face pushback. Meta has no intention of changing to suit the whims of global legislators: that is the hard truth that any attempt to regulate it must face. As such, a Meta-sponsored roundtable on the right way to keep kids safe on their platforms will never be anything but a feint, regardless of jurisdiction.
Article Topics
age verification | India | Meta | regulation | social media