Opinion Ghaziabad triple tragedy: Australia banned social media for minors. India must follow its lead

There is now abundant evidence from internal documents and independent research that shows how algorithms engineered by the top social-media companies prioritise addictive engagement over children’s safety, amplifying harms like anxiety, dissatisfaction with one’s body or social life, and suicidal ideation. Numerous studies link heavy childhood social media use to increased risks of depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and self-harm, with effects strongest in preteens and early teens. Moreover, this addictive potential puts children in direct conflict with their parents because it takes over all aspects of their lives, not least their need to play, study, and sleep.

Why, one may ask, do social media’s toxic effects only apply to children and adolescents? Quite simply, because the brain undergoes dramatic changes in its structure and function, which makes this period of life particularly vulnerable. The fact that our brains are exquisitely sensitive to our social environments coincides with the fact that adolescence is the phase in our life course when one is developmentally primed to compare oneself with and to model one’s peers. These features make the young person uniquely susceptible to the addictive potential of substances that trigger the brain’s reward pathways.

We have known this for decades, and this is why we impose age limits on alcohol and tobacco. What we now know is that these same reward pathways, which can lead to addiction, can also be triggered by social-media algorithms. And the companies not only know this but deliberately mine this knowledge regardless of the damage they can cause.

Tech companies have argued that denying children access to social media violates their rights to information, that the evidence on harm is weak, and, in any case, parents should take the responsibility to manage their children. Of course, this is exactly the playbook that the tobacco industry argued for decades, blaming smokers for their sickness and death rather than their product and rubbishing the large body of science through a formidable array of tactics, including, not surprisingly, bribing legislators.

This is also the playbook that the ultra-processed food and sugared beverage industries leverage as they profit from the fattening and sickening of an entire generation of children and young people, while big pharma profits from drugs to combat these man-made epidemics.

Like tobacco and the food and beverage industry, social media companies know which features of their products can hook children, and they amplify them, for example, by continuing to optimise feeds for maximum dwell time and incorporating infinite scroll, which mimics slot machines. Platforms deploy AI-driven feeds that favour outrage, insecurity, and FOMO (fear of missing out) while generating billions in ad revenue.

Even more repulsive are the allegations from an ongoing US court filing, which has documented evidence from internal sources that the leadership of Meta knowingly exposed girls to sexual violence and human traffickers.

While the companies also claim that children are already banned from their platforms, the age limit is as low as 13, and, incredibly, they don’t even enforce any age verification. Unsurprisingly, it is estimated that nearly 40 per cent of 8-12-year-olds in the US already use social media platforms like Instagram and Snapchat.

What Australia has done is to place the responsibility for verifying the age of its subscribers on the company and empowering parents to sue the companies if their children are found to have created accounts. As one might guess, the law has widespread support from parents. Suddenly, these companies have had to enforce age verification, indicating that they already had the capability to do so but deliberately furnished spurious reasons not to.

Many high-income countries, including the US, Australia, the UK, Japan, and South Korea, have witnessed a dramatic worsening of youth mental health in the past decade, a period during which smartphones and social media fused and took over children’s lives. At the same time, the experience of loneliness in young people has surged in these countries. These are not coincidental findings, for loneliness is the direct result of spending less time with real friends compared to online ones.

This crisis has led many scholars and policymakers, including the former US Surgeon-General, to declare that social media is hurting young people and triggered a wave of lawsuits against the companies. And now, one country has imposed a ban. Important to note: This is not a ban on accessing the internet, for example, to watch videos or look up information; it is only a ban on opening a social media account.

As Jonathan Haidt, a noted scholar of this subject, observes, what the ban in Australia changes “is that some of the largest companies on earth can no longer form business relationships with young children or use their personal data to keep them hooked on feeds, likes, and alerts”.

While many countries are watching the fallout of Australia’s action closely, India must take steps to implement such a ban immediately.

First, even though smartphone penetration is rising rapidly, the ASER 2024 reports that only a third of rural adolescents under the age of 16 own a personal smartphone. So, action now will not only protect future generations but also the majority of our children today. Second, there are already signs that mental health problems are worsening in young people, as evidenced by recent surveys observing high rates of emotional distress and one of the highest youth suicide rates in the world.

And finally, our policymakers and development gurus keep trumpeting on about the country’s youth dividend, referring to the enormous economic potential of our large population of young people; surely, they must not squander this simply to enrich tech companies.

The writer is Paul Farmer Professor of Global Health at Harvard Medical School