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.

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, including toddlers. A doctor pointed to National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) data showing a 400% rise in cybercrimes involving children between 2019 and 2021.

However, the discussion consistently returned to 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, marginalised girls in remote areas, and those isolated by geography or family circumstances.

On technical feasibility: There was near-unanimous agreement that age verification, as currently proposed, will not work. Circumvention is already widespread. For instance, 32% of children in the UK bypassed age checks, and VPN usage spiked by 1,800% within three days of the Online Safety Act. In India, all age verification, in practice, becomes Aadhaar verification, which carries significant privacy costs. To identify who is a child, every internet user must first be identified.

Participants also flagged the impossibility of enforcing state-level bans across state borders, the structural mismatch between verification frameworks and India’s shared-device reality, and the risk that bans push children towards entirely unregulated platforms with little or no oversight.

On the right approach: The discussion referred to platform-level, design-based regulation, specifically building on the UK’s Age-Appropriate Design Code as a more targeted and enforceable alternative to outright blanket bans. Participants argued that regulation must address the root causes of harm: hyper-personalised recommendation algorithms, infinite scroll, gamification mechanics, engagement streaks, and dopamine-driven content discovery. These are deliberate design choices, not technical constraints, and should therefore be regulated.

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). Parental agency must be strengthened through both digital literacy programmes and the ability to challenge or override platform-level restrictions through a formal escalation pathway.

The consensus: Blanket bans are a blunt instrument shaped more by political objectives than by public policy evidence. They create an illusion of action while driving harm underground. The more durable path is evidence-based, design-focused regulation that progressively builds children’s agency, places accountability on platforms rather than children, and distributes responsibility across parents, schools, platforms, and the state, without dismantling the internet access that many of India’s most vulnerable children depend on.

About the discussion: 

  • Ajay Kumar, Partner, Triumvir Law
  • Sushma Gopalan, Lead Consultant Child Life Services – Psychologist, Manipal Hospitals
  • Saurabh Shashi Ashok, Resource Person for Health – Policy and Law, Initiative for Child Protection and Mental Health, Azim Premji Foundation
  • Harshitha Thammaiah, Senior Director and General Counsel, Xiaomi
  • Shrinivas Puli, Head of Strategic alliances & Founder’s office, Digio
  • Rishi Mazumdar, Educational Technology Architect, QUEST Alliance
  • Arun S Prabhu, Partner, Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas
  • Uthara Ganesh, APAC Head of Public Policy, Snap
  • Sandesh GS, CTO, Bureau
  • Dr Preeti Galagali, Director, Bengaluru Adolescent Care and Counselling Centre
  • Nivedita Krishna, Founder, Pacta
  • D. Shashi Kumar, General Secretary, KAMS
  • Puja Deshpande, Head, Privacy Implementation – Privy, IDfy
  • Shubhika H. Goel, Associate Director – Policy Advocacy and Communications, Broadband India Forum
  • Gurumurthy Kasinathan, Co-founder, IT For Change
  • Lokesh Talikatte, Chairperson, Sandeepani Group of Schools
  • Nirmal Bhansali, Associate, Ikigai Law
  • Anand Vijayasimha, Visiting Faculty, École Intuit Lab

Participation: We saw participation from organisations including Meta, Amazon, LinkedIn, Flipkart, Xiaomi, Mindtree, Junglee Games, ShareChat, Vcraft Technologies (Zoho Partner), Echo.ai, Takshashila Institution, Tata Trusts, Hasgeek, Child Rights Trust, Aapti Institute, Devopedia Foundation, Organization for Research and Education on Social Policy, Nation First Policy Research and Change Foundation, Internet Service Providers Association of India (ISPAI), AltED, Broadband India Forum (BIF), C-HELP, AI Tech Ethics, DataLEADS, The Pranava Institute, Tapovan School, NFPRC, Independent, JSA, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co., CMS IndusLaw, Economic Laws Practice, Dentons Link Legal, Saikrishna & Associates, Nishith Desai Associates, PwC, PMB Legal, Ikigai Law, Spice Route Legal, and Saikrishna & Associates.

Support and partners: This discussion was organised with support from Meta and Snap. Our community partners for this event were Pacta, Design Beku, and The Pranava Institute.