India discussing age-based restrictions with social media firms, top minister says

NEW DELHI — India is discussing age-based restrictions with social media companies, Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Tuesday.

“This is something which has now been accepted by many countries, that age-based [restrictions] … has to be there,” Vaishnaw said during a press conference at the AI Impact Summit in New Delhi.

“Right now we are in conversation regarding deepfakes, regarding age-based restrictions, with the various social media platforms,” Vaishnaw said, adding that the government is looking into “the right way” to enact regulation. The minister did not name any specific platforms or companies that the Indian government is talking to.

Any crackdown in India, a country of over 1.4 billion people, could have a major impact on companies from Meta to Google, which have hundreds of millions of users in the nation.

While India has not yet decided on such a move, the comments are among the first publicly from a top official in government. India now joins a growing chorus of governments that are debating whether to restrict children from certain platforms, following Australia’s move in December to ban users under the age of 16 from accessing major social media platforms.

Australia became the world’s first country to enact such a rule, with other countries now looking to follow suit. Denmark late last year approved a new rule to block under-15s from social media platforms, while Spain this month said it would ban under-16s from social media.

Meta’s Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram platforms are estimated to be among the most popular apps in India while there is also a big audience for Google’s YouTube.