(Bloomberg) — Officials in India are publicly debating age restrictions for accessing social media, a potential fresh challenge to Big Tech in a massive market for users as global debate grows over online harms to children.
Parliamentarian Lavu Sri Krishna Devarayalu, whose party is aligned with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s, plans to introduce a private member’s bill in the coming months barring children under 16 from maintaining social media accounts. The aim is to ensure data privacy and protect children and adolescents from exploitation, Devarayalu said in an interview.Such bills don’t represent government policy and typically don’t become laws, but can lead to wider parliamentary debate. State level officials and India’s finance ministry have also raised the issue of potential harms from social media.
Any move to limit access to platforms in the world’s most populous nation would be a blow to the likes of Meta Platforms Inc.’s Instagram and Facebook, Snap Inc.’s Snapchat, Elon Musk’s X and more. Australia blocking under-16s from social media has prompted governments around the world to propose following suit, and a similar move by India would be the most significant yet by the number of users affected.
Instagram and Facebook each have over 400 million users in India, more than any other country, according to DataReportal, a library of reports on global digital behavior. Snapchat has more than 200 million on its platform there, making India its largest market by users, while X has more than 20 million users, the data shows.
While the companies typically earn less revenue per user in India than in more economically developed countries such as the US, India represents unrivaled potential for growth. It is home to the world’s largest remaining pool of untapped digital consumers, with legions of people yet to get online.
Devarayalu said responsibility for ensuring compliance would rest with the tech firms. Penalties according to his planned Social Media Age Restrictions and Online Safety Bill could be as much as 2.5 billion rupees ($28 million) or 5% of a company’s global revenue, whichever is lower.
“If we can ban apps like TikTok, or the ones for gambling, this can be done easily as well because the resources are there for it,” he said.