Twenty-nine U.S. states took on social media giants, accusing them of deliberately designing their platforms to be addictive and harmful to children. On August 26, Meta agreed to introduce stronger safeguards for teenagers on Facebook and Instagram, including a two-hour daily usage limit. Snapchat, TikTok and YouTube are expected to follow suit. In all, 47 American states agreed to the primary multi-state settlement, under which Meta will pay up to $16.7 billion and introduce new safeguards for users under 18.

The most prominent change is a two-hour daily usage limit for minors on Facebook and Instagram (excluding direct messaging), which can only be modified by parents. Meta will also implement automatic overnight lockouts, offer teenagers a non-personalized chronological feed instead of algorithmic recommendations, and strengthen its age-verification systems under the oversight of an independent court-appointed auditor. “Protect our kids too.” Within 24 hours, the European Union (EU) had new “exchanges” with Meta, demanding similar safeguards. European Commission spokesman Thomas Regnier said, “Now it is for the company to offer these commitments in the European Union to protect our kids here too.”

The EU had already, in April, found Meta in preliminary breach of the Digital Services Act (DSA) for failing to prevent children under 13 from accessing Instagram and Facebook. So where is India in this global reckoning? India is home to over 47 crore children aged 0-18 years. One in five children on the planet lives here. They are just as susceptible, if not more so, given weaker institutional safeguards, to the same algorithmic harms. The dangers are not abstract; smartphones are increasingly becoming a serious threat to children’s psychological and social development. Over the past two years, society has been shaken by........

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