The Andhra Pradesh government is mulling an Australia-like law preventing teenagers under the age of 16 from getting access to social media.
According to Nara Lokesh, the state's IT and education minister, children under a certain age were best kept off social media, as they would not fully understand what they were looking at.
“As a state, we are studying Australia’s under-16 law, and yes, I believe we need to create a strong legal enactment,” Lokesh told Bloomberg News on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.
He added that the Centre had not yet expressed any opinions on regulating social media use for teenagers, due to which the burden fell on state governments to do so.
Earlier this month, Lokesh had also asserted that the state government would strongly act against individuals and groups spreading malicious and obscene content on social media.
If it comes into force, the Andhra Pradesh government's new social media policy would be the first in the country to start tackling the mental health issues arising out of minors using social media.
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This comes more than a month after Australia enforced its Online Safety Amendment Act on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Kick, Reddit, Snapchat, Threads, TikTok, X, YouTube and Twitch.
The stated aim of the move was to protect minors' mental health, and to keep them safe from online harm, cyberbullying, catfishing, and addictive algorithms.
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As a result, the platforms were forced to implement age verification methods to ensure teens under 16 are unable to create an account. Companies can now face fines of up to A$49.5 million Australian dollars ($32 million) for not complying with the December 10 policy.
Though it has received mixed reactions from teenagers, tech giants, and experts, the move had an impact across Australia, with many other nations—most recently, the UK—enforce similar policies.