New Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ally party MP LSK. Devarayalu (MP LSK Devarayalu) has presented a proposal to ban social media for children below 16 years of age. Under this, creating and running social media accounts for children below 16 years of age will be banned.
The proposal comes at a time when Australia has banned social media for children under 16, and the issue is being debated in many countries including France, Britain, Denmark, Greece, Germany.
Devarayalu says that India is a big source of data of young users and foreign companies are creating advanced AI systems based on this data. He has demanded to give full responsibility of verifying the age of the user on social media platforms.
According to the report, the proposal is a 15-page “Social Media (Age Restrictions and Online Safety) Bill”, which has been introduced in Parliament as a Private Members’ Bill. According to the bill, no juvenile below the age of 16 years will be allowed to create, maintain or operate a social media account, and such accounts must be deactivated.
There is no minimum age for accessing social media in India, even though the country is the world’s second-largest smartphone market and has nearly 1 billion internet users. With this proposal, the debate on digital addiction and child safety has intensified in the country.