Regulatory Social Media and Smartphones for Children and Adolescents: India Needs Immediate Action on a Global Scale

The growth of smartphones and social networking services in the 21 ^st century has had an enormous impact on the development of childhood and adolescence in India. Digital technologies provide a wide range of opportunities for education, communication, and creativity, but growing evidence indicates that excessive and uncontrolled smartphone and social media use has negative impacts on children’s and adolescents’ mental, physical, and social well-being. Reports of digital literacy challenges, problematic social media use, cyberbullying, sleep disturbances, anxiety, depression, and academic distraction are much higher in some countries. The vulnerability of adolescents is particularly unsettling as a young person enters a pivotal period in both his or her neurodevelopment and psychosocial profile. But in some countries, those responses include limiting social media, prohibiting it in schools, and cracking down on age-verification laws. Australia, for example, has passed one of the harshest world regulations by prohibiting anyone under 16 from using social media, and some European countries are currently grappling with similar measures. India has no strict regulatory controls on children’s use of social media, despite having one of the highest shares of young smartphone users worldwide. This editorial explores global evidence on digital technology and youth, its implications for youth well-being and new regulations, and calls on India to formulate a coherent policy framework to safeguard the welfare of children and adolescents in the digital age.