For over a year now internet is being flooded with news of governments banning children under 16 years of age from using social media websites. First it was Australia, then countries like Indonesia  and France also decided to restrict children under 16 to use social media. This was followed by Karnataka in India to ban under 16 children from using social media.

The restrictive action is planned to improve mental and physical wellbeing of children. I am however not very happy with using the word “ban” by the governments in this case. The word carries heavy responsibility for the “banned” to stop doing something and  not to violate prohibitory orders by the authorities.  Can the child mind carry such a load when children have been accustomed with the “entertainment” platform since their babyhood? Infact if we go ahead for average calculation to understand how long GenZ  may have been using social media platforms, the recent verdict of a Los Angeles trial court can give a crystal clear answer: a young woman in her 20’s sued Meta and YouTube as prominent social media companies for making her addicted to the platforms. Court ordered social media giants to pay a hefty amount as compensation. She had been using them since she was 6. 14 years is more than a decade! 

Orkut, a popular social media platform was launched in 2004 and it made all of us, Gen x  and  Y quite addicted to it because it gave us chance to get connected to our long lost friends and make new friends whom we may not meet in real life. Orkut gave way to Facebook which later became a big fat Meta family. Many of us voluntarily led our children to access Orkut and then Facebook in the past 20 years.

If we lookback, there are three issues that may attract the legal lenses :

• Parental liability : Around 20 years back the social media platforms were designed to “access friends”. This lead to multiple privacy problems where women were the worst sufferers. Everyone wanted to be friends in their own way and some decided to ‘consume’ women for their own sexual gratification. Social media platforms were not much ready to give space to children as users. Therefore, almost all US based social media companies allowed children who are above 13 to use the platforms. But hold on.. many parents across the globe had already given access to their under 13 children to their devices and the social media platforms. Children knew how to scroll, how to read a post and also how to ‘safely’ and ‘secretly’ use parent’s profiles. Social media companies developed their policies to provide parental control, restrictions for accessing privately shared images and contents and reporting mechanisms.

Who is responsible for making children addicted to the moving screen objects, sounds and entertainment? Parents, juridical personalities (social media companies) or the society as a whole?

•  State as de-facto faulty guardian: Who gives the ‘banning’ order? The State! Have we ever considered how governments are in the net-worked world now? Every department of the government has a Facebook, Instagram, X handle. Apparently whenever anyone wants to lodge a grievance against public services, it is visible not only to the public at large, the intermediary may also become a platform where certain data may rest.  Given this condition, the State has to be extremely cautious about data shared on the platform, with the platform and the security and safety of the users. Digital connectivity enables all including children to access information and share information. This is an extremely positive tool for transparent governance.  But when social media handles of different departments are considered as gateways for accessing e-governance, State needs to be extremely thoughtful to allow or ban them for children.

Who takes the accountability for letting people expose location data and other vulnerable data in the name of appreciation of talents, grievance redressal mechanism ? is it the State? Or the social media websites or the users (some of whom had been using social media platforms for a long time since they were young?)

• Design of the websites: Now this is the most interesting part! Social media websites are notoriously ‘addictive’ because they have developed such a great algorithm mechanism that even our great astrologers may fail. The social media companies engage millions of software developers and computer engineers who enable the system to read choices of people: be it a political content, lifestyle related content, songs and dances, infotainments, updates about products or tourism destinations or scientific evolutions. Over 20+ years companies like Meta, YouTube, Google have provided us updated ‘customized’  viewer’s choice. Some have also developed a cautionary side doze in the form of calculated screen time. This has generated a huge business. The more the content is ‘watched’, the more the creator earns money. The company shares the revenue as profit for the content creator.  These companies grew up learning about mental health of users and developing tools to measure emotions of users. They developed parental control mechanisms, self-harm monitoring mechanisms and privacy protection mechanisms. Nothing actually proved to be ‘everlasting best mechanism.’ Social media companies have always used immunity veil to escape third party liability. Nonetheless, these companies have engaged with practitioners, researchers from law and other streams to develop their policies against misuse of the platforms, strengthening safety of women and children and men. But they have also found unique legal ways to escape the liability of risking mental health of users especially when they made us the users accept our own liability to use the platforms cautiously with all the safety ‘gears’ of the platforms through their click wrap contracts.    

Meta and YouTube are contesting the Los Angeles court verdict. Even if they pay the compensation and damages for creating ‘addictive products’ can we really remain self-controlled? can our children be free from internet –addiction ? we cannot blame a single stakeholder.

 It must be a collective responsibility of all: the parents, schools, State and the   tech companies to make our and our children’s lives comfortable, happy and active in the internet era. We must not forget the old saying : it takes a village to raise a child. That ‘village’ in today’s world includes all stakeholders mentioned above.

Cite it as Halder Debarati (2026) “Rethinking about accountability for internet addiction:  Who pushes? parents or the social media companies” Published in https://internetlegalstudies.com/2026/03/29/rethinking-about-accountability-for-internet-addiction-who-pushes-parents-or-the-social-media-companies-by-dr-debarati-halder/ on 29-03-2026