4 min readMar 30, 2026 06:13 AM IST
First published on: Mar 30, 2026 at 06:13 AM IST
On March 25, a Los Angeles court awarded a now 20-year-old woman $6 million after jurors found Meta platforms and YouTube (Google) negligently designed addictive platforms that harmed her mental health as a minor. The jury held the companies liable for exploiting young users through algorithmic recommendations, endless scrolling and incessant notifications, despite awareness of associated risks like anxiety, depression and obsessive usage. The ruling could influence thousands of similar lawsuits across the US.
The timing is appropriate. Recently, Karnataka’s 2026-27 budget proposed a ban on social media for under-16s, echoing moves in Australia, Indonesia, France and many other European countries. India’s 460 million-plus social media users, one-third under 18, face real harms, including cyberbullying, sleep deprivation, distorted self-image. Yet, the Los Angeles verdict does not vindicate bans. It demolishes them.
The jury’s finding is clear: Harm stems less from children’s choices than from platforms’ business model — what scholars like B J Fogg identified as “persuasive design” within “platform capitalism”. Features that maximise engagement, drive data extraction and ad revenue, making these companies among the most valuable globally. Internal documents presented in court reportedly showed that the management of the platforms recognised the mental-health risks to adolescents but preferred “engagement” metrics that drive billions in advertising revenue. By pinning liability on the platform architects rather than the users, the verdict rejects the notion that children are the problem.
Bans are largely performative, shifting responsibility onto families and the state. Constitutionally, a state like Karnataka cannot unilaterally muzzle global platforms, as IT falls under the Centre’s jurisdiction. Practically, bans collapse — children can bypass them by falsifying age, sharing devices or using VPNs, as studies have repeatedly shown. Stringent age-verification invites questions related to surveillance and privacy. Moreover, bans infantilise adolescents. As social scientist Danah Boyd has argued, platforms function as “networked publics” where young people build identities and social connections. Blanket restrictions further deepen inequality: Data from National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) and UNESCO show stark disparities in smartphone access, meaning affluent urban children are barely affected, while rural or low-income youth face greater marginalisation.
The deeper flaw in ban-centric thinking is that it leaves the root cause untouched. Karnataka’s accompanying campaign — “Mobile Bidi, Pustaka Hidi” (Drop the mobile, pick up a book) — is commendable for promoting reading. However, reading alone will not fix an attention economy built on addiction-by-design.
What India needs is platform-focused regulation. Frameworks like the EU’s Digital Services Act and the UK’s Age-Appropriate Design Code already mandate algorithmic transparency, limits on minors’ data use, and safer interface design. India’s forthcoming Digital India Bill should go further — mandating age-appropriate design by default, restricting targeted advertising to minors, curbing addictive features like autoplay and endless scrolling, and imposing strong penalties for violations. Enforcement must be uniform nationwide, not patchy state action.
The Karnataka proposal has sparked an important national debate on digital childhood. But the US court’s stance reframes the issue: The question is not whether children should be banned, but whether platforms can treat them as profit centres. A verdict that compels Meta and YouTube to compensate for harm they knowingly caused is a powerful signal: Regulation must redesign the digital landscape itself. Anything less merely displaces responsibility while the addictive machinery keeps humming. Protecting India’s young citizens requires placing accountability squarely on the companies that built these platforms—anything less is abdication.
Ravikumar teaches at Department of Communication, University of Hyderabad. Jena teaches at School of Management, IIT Mandi
