High Court suggests age limit for social media use, draws parallels with alcohol regulations
PTC News Desk: Karnataka High Court on Tuesday held that an age limit for using social media, similar to the legal drinking age, would be suitable.
The observation was made by a division bench of Justices G Narendar and Vijaykumar A Patil while hearing an appeal by X Corp (formerly Twitter) challenging a single-judge order from June 30 that dismissed its plea to the takedown orders issued by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeiTY).
Between February 2, 2021 and February 28, 2022, MeiTY issued 10 Government Orders under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act directing it to restrict 1,474 accounts, 175 Tweets, 256 URLs, and one hashtag. Twitter filed a challenge to the orders pertaining to 39 of these URLs.
"Ban social media. I will tell you a lot of good will come. Today's school-going children are so addicted to it. I think there should be an age limit such as in Excise rules," Justice G Narendar said.
The court went on to say that "children may be 17 or 18. But do they have the maturity to judge what is or is not in the interest of the nation? Not only on social media, but even on the Internet things should be removed, it corrupts the mind. The government should consider bringing in an age limit for the use of social media."
X Corp was also fined Rs. 50 lakh by the court. The counsel for X Corp contended that MeiTY had not informed users about the blocking of their tweets and accounts and that the firm was even barred from alerting them.
The court asked the government "You do not release the order. He is not permitted to reveal the order. How is he going to defend himself?"
The high court noted that the government may need to change the guidelines slightly because X Corp is blocking users' accounts at the government's discretion, and the company cannot be left high and dry.
The High Court, on the other hand, stated that "When it comes to national security, everybody has to be on the same page."