(UCA News) — There is a moment many parish priests and youth ministers know well. A teenager sits in the front pew during Sunday service, phone tucked just below the hymnal, thumb moving in a slow, familiar rhythm. Nobody says anything. What would you even say? The phone is not the problem, exactly. But it points to one.

Karnataka’s proposal to ban social media for children under 16 arrived quietly, buried in a state budget announcement by Chief Minister Siddaramaiah. It has since sparked exactly the kind of debate that most institutions prefer to watch from a safe distance. The Church should not be one of them.

This conversation belongs to us as much as it belongs to lawmakers and technology companies, perhaps more so, because what is really being debated is not a policy. It is the shape of a childhood.

The concern at the heart of the proposal is one the Church has been circling for years without always naming it directly. Children are growing up inside an environment that was not designed with their flourishing in mind.

Social media platforms are built to capture attention and hold it, using techniques refined by some of the most sophisticated engineers on earth. Algorithms learn what triggers emotion and deliver more of it, relentlessly, without pause or mercy. Adults struggle with this pull.........

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