The Karnataka High Court has recommended that the Central government must explore the idea of establishing a minimum age requirement for accessing social media platforms in order to restrict children from using them.

“Best is to ban social media. I will tell you, lot of good will come. Seriously, today, school-going children are so addicted to it. At least, you should bring a user age limit. The children maybe 17 or 18, does he have the maturity to judge what is in the interest of the nation, what is not in the interest of the nation? User should be at least the age of 21 (years), because that is the age at which he gets to vote,” a bench of Justices G Narender and Vijaykumar A Patil made the abovementioned suggestion while discussing the potential risks associated with exposing children to social media platforms.

The comment was made towards the conclusion of the hearing in the appeal by X Corp (formerly known as Twitter) in the case related to the Indian government's directives to restrict specific tweets and accounts in 2021 and 2022.

The legal representative for the Central government informed the Court that current legislation mandates users to provide their Aadhaar and other identification documents before gaining access to specific online games. Following this statement, the Court inquired why similar measures were not being applied to social media platforms as well.

During today's hearing, the Court expressed apprehension about the necessity of potentially modifying regulations to ensure that intermediaries like X Corp are not placed under the threat of legal action by account holders when they are required to remove posts or accounts while safeguarding confidentiality. The bench also noted that X Corp cannot be expected to act as a judge in determining which posts or accounts should be removed based on subjective evaluations.

The bench emphasized that the sole aspect to be considered is whether the content in question breaches Section 69A (1) and (2) of the Information Technology Act, 2000. If these provisions are violated, then X Corp would be obligated to adhere to blocking orders. However, in situations where no such violation is identified, the Court questioned whether X Corp could be compelled to remove content, potentially exposing themselves to prosecution by the account holder.

In the meantime, the legal representative for X Corp informed the Court that their challenge in the appeal is limited to the way a single judge of the High Court had previously commented on the interpretation of the law regarding blocking posts and accounts. It was explained to the Court that X Corp has now fulfilled all the previous requests to block posts and accounts. Nevertheless, a concern was raised that more than 1,000 tweets were requested to be removed without adequate reasons being provided.

The Court acknowledged the submission and noted that the concern revolved around the manner in which the Central government can enforce its blocking orders. The Court verbally observed that such orders must be accompanied by justifications, or else the social media intermediary could face legal action from its users.
The matter originated when Twitter, as it was called at the time, contested specific blocking orders issued by the Indian government. A single judge of the Karnataka High Court dismissed the challenge and directed the social media company to pay a fine of ₹50 lakh as a penalty for what was perceived as a delay in adhering to the block requests.

The microblogging platform contested the single judge's order. On August 10, a division bench of the High Court temporarily suspended the single judge's order, depending upon X Corp depositing ₹25 lakhs as a demonstration of its good faith or sincerity in the matter.

The verdict on the interlocutory applications is scheduled to be delivered on Wednesday.

Case: X Corp vs Union of India (W.P. No. 13710 of 2022).