We have a fairly expansive agenda for our roundtable on age verification and restricting social media access for children in India. The discussion will focus on understanding the reasons behind these demands, how age verification systems might work in practice, the technical and enforcement challenges involved, and the legal and technical alternatives to bans. Details are below.

Apply to attend here.

• Date: Friday, 15 May 2026
• Time: 1 PM to 5 PM
• Venue: Hotel Royal Orchid, Domlur, Bengaluru. [Google Maps Link]

Agenda:

• 12:30 – 1:00 PM: Lunch and networking
• 1:00 – 5:00 PM: Roundtable discussion 

Note: This is an invite-only discussion, under Chatham House Rule, so we’ll have to approve participation.

Here is a broad breakdown of the topics we will discuss across three segments during the roundtable (with breaks):

Impact of digital platforms on children: what are we optimising for?

• Gaps in understanding the harms and benefits of social media.
• Access to knowledge, learning, and participation online.
• The impact on children without alternative access to information or education.
• Who decides what content or platforms are considered “harmful”?
• What should the evidentiary threshold for harm be?
• International approaches and lessons from Australia, Indonesia, and the Age Appropriate Design Code.
• What India can learn from global approaches to age verification.

Technical implementation, models, and enforcement challenges:

• Technical and operational issues with age verification systems.
• Different verification models, where verification should take place, and who should conduct it.
• False positives (blocking legitimate users) and false negatives (children bypassing restrictions).
• Data collection implications and alignment with the DPDP Act.
• Implementation challenges in households with shared devices.
• The feasibility of implementing restrictions across state boundaries.
• Implications of building age verification infrastructure at scale.
• Workarounds, including VPNs, borrowed credentials, AI-based age estimation, and movement across encrypted and unencrypted platforms.

Balancing protection, agency, and policy design: 

• Existing safety mechanisms and possible improvements.
• Age verification versus parental controls versus bans.
• Schools and digital literacy interventions.
• Enforcement responsibilities, penalties, and accountability mechanisms.
• Lessons from regulations that failed at the enforcement stage.
• The Centre’s proposed graded framework (8-12, 12-16, 16-18) and its implications for implementation and platform design.
• Centre-state jurisdictional and enforcement challenges.
• Measuring regulatory success and adapting policy over time.
• What is likely to fail at the implementation and enforcement level.

This is an invite-only discussion, so please apply.

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• Registration does not guarantee attendance. In case you fit our mandate for the curated audience, we’ll send you a confirmation by May 14, 2026.
• Your contact information will never be shared with anyone outside of MediaNama.

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