iWorld
Karnataka to ban social media for children under 16; Meta warns of risks
Meta urges parental oversight over blanket bans as debate on child online safety grows
KARNATAKA: Karnataka may bar children under 16 from accessing social media platforms, chief minister Siddaramaiah said on Friday while presenting the state budget. This marks the most definitive move yet by an Indian state to regulate young users online.
The proposal aims to limit the harmful effects of excessive mobile and social media use among children, the chief minister said, amid growing concerns about screen addiction and mental health.
If implemented, Karnataka would become the first state in India to formally move towards a ban on social media access for minors under 16. Other states, including Andhra Pradesh and Goa, have previously said they were examining similar measures.
The idea has been under discussion within the state government for months. Earlier this year, state minister for information technology and biotechnology Priyank Kharge, told the legislative assembly that the government was studying ways to ensure responsible use of artificial intelligence and social media by young users.
Health minister Dinesh Gundu Rao has also raised concerns about excessive screen exposure among children. Meanwhile, BJP MLA and former minister Suresh Kumar urged the government to treat the issue seriously, warning that unrestricted social media use could affect both education and family life.
Siddaramaiah had previously discussed the issue with university vice-chancellors as well, seeking their views on restricting mobile phone use among children under 16.
Karnataka’s proposal comes amid a widening global debate over children’s access to social media.
Countries such as Australia have introduced stricter limits on younger users, while governments in the United Kingdom and Finland have also been exploring regulatory safeguards.
In parts of Europe, including France and Spain, schools have imposed restrictions on smartphone use in classrooms to reduce distraction and improve student focus.
Policymakers worldwide are increasingly concerned about the impact of social media algorithms, digital addiction and online risks on minors.
India’s Economic Survey 2025–26 also flagged excessive smartphone use among young people, linking it to sleep disruption, anxiety, reduced attention spans and rising academic stress.
Experts say the dangers extend beyond simple screen addiction.
Cybersecurity specialists warn that children often share personal information online without understanding privacy implications. Social media platforms, gaming apps and messaging services routinely collect location data, behavioural patterns, voice samples and browsing habits, creating digital profiles that could later be misused for surveillance, identity theft or targeted manipulation.
Online grooming is another growing concern. Law enforcement agencies globally have warned that predators increasingly use social media, gaming chats and messaging platforms to gain the trust of minors before exploiting them.
Artificial intelligence is also complicating the landscape. AI-powered recommendation systems and chatbots can keep children engaged for long periods while collecting behavioural data. In some cases, experts say these systems may inadvertently expose young users to harmful content.
Technology companies, however, argue that outright bans may not be the most effective solution.
Responding to the proposal, Meta said governments should prioritise parental oversight rather than blanket restrictions.
A Meta spokesperson said the company shares the goal of creating safer online experiences for young users but believes parents should ultimately decide which apps their teenagers use.
“We want the same thing as lawmakers: safe, positive online experiences for young people and believe parents should decide which apps their teens use,” the spokesperson said.
The company warned that sweeping bans could push teenagers towards less regulated websites or workarounds that bypass existing safety protections.
“Governments considering bans should be careful not to push teens toward less safe, unregulated sites, or logged-out experiences that bypass important protections,” the spokesperson added, pointing to safeguards such as Instagram’s Teen Accounts.
Meta also argued that focusing on a handful of platforms may not address the broader issue, noting that teenagers typically use dozens of apps each week. Experts say blanket bans may prove difficult to enforce in practice. Young users could circumvent restrictions through virtual private networks, anonymous accounts or lesser-known platforms that operate outside major regulatory frameworks.
Because digital platforms also provide access to educational resources, coding communities and creative opportunities, policymakers are increasingly exploring a middle path. That approach combines age-based safeguards, stronger privacy protections, parental supervision and digital literacy programmes instead of outright bans.
eNews
How short, addictive story videos quietly colonised the Indian smartphone
A landmark Meta-Ormax study of 2,000 viewers reveals a format that is growing fast, paying slowly and consumed almost entirely in secret
MUMBAI: India has a new entertainment habit, and it arrived without anyone really noticing. Micro dramas, those short, cliffhanger-driven episodic stories built for the smartphone screen, have quietly embedded themselves into the daily routines of millions of Indians, discovered not by design but by algorithmic accident, watched not in living rooms but in bedrooms, on commutes and in the five minutes before sleep.
That, in essence, is the finding of a sweeping new audience study released by Meta and media insights firm Ormax Media at Meta’s inaugural Marketing Summit: Micro-Drama Edition. Titled “Micro Dramas: The India Story” and based on 2,000 personal interviews and 50 depth interviews conducted between November 2025 and January 2026 across 14 states, it is the most comprehensive study of the category in India to date, and its findings are striking.
Sixty-five per cent of viewers discovered micro dramas within the last year. Of those, 89 per cent stumbled upon the format through social media feeds, primarily Instagram and Facebook, without ever searching for it. The algorithm did the heavy lifting. Discovery, as the report puts it bluntly, is algorithm-led, not intent-led.
The typical viewer journey begins with accidental exposure while scrolling, moves through a cliffhanger-driven incompletion hook that makes stopping feel unfinished, and is reinforced by algorithmic repetition until habitual consumption sets in. Only then, when a platform asks for an app download or a payment, does the viewer pause. Trust, not content quality, determines what happens next, and many simply return to the free feed rather than pay. It is a funnel with a wide mouth and a narrow neck.
The numbers on consumption tell their own story. Viewers spend a median of 3.5 hours per week watching micro dramas, spread across seven to eight sessions of roughly 30 minutes each, peaking sharply between 8pm and midnight. Daytime viewing is snackable and low-commitment, squeezed into morning commutes, work breaks and coffee pauses. Night-time is where the format truly lives: private, uninterrupted and, for many viewers, socially invisible. Ninety per cent watch alone, compared to just 43 per cent for long-form OTT content. Half the audience watches during their commute, well above the 37 per cent figure for streaming platforms, a direct reflection of the format’s low time investment advantage.
The audience itself breaks into three segments. Incidental viewers, comprising 39 per cent of the total, are passive consumers who stumble in and rarely seek content actively. Intent-building viewers, the largest group at 43 per cent, are beginning to form habits and seek out episodes but remain cautious. High-intent viewers, just 18 per cent, are the ones who download apps, tolerate ads and occasionally pay: skewing male, younger and urban.
What audiences want from the content is revealing. The top three genres are romance at 72 per cent, family drama at 64 per cent and comedy at 63 per cent, precisely the same top three as Hindi general entertainment television. The format rewards emotional familiarity over complexity. Romance in particular thrives because it demands low cognitive investment, needs no elaborate world-building and plays naturally into the private, pre-sleep viewing window where inhibitions lower and emotional intimacy feels safe.
The most-recalled shows, led by Kuku TV titles such as The Lady Boss Returns, The Billionaire Husband and Kiss My Luck, share a common narrative DNA: rich-poor conflict, hidden identities, power imbalances, melodrama and cliffhangers that make stopping feel physically uncomfortable. Predictability, the research warns, is fatal. Each episode must re-earn attention from scratch.
The terminology question is telling. Despite the industry’s embrace of the phrase “micro drama,” viewers have not adopted it. They call the content “short story videos,” “short dramas,” “reels with stories” or simply “serials.” One respondent from Chennai said bluntly that “micro sounds like a scientific word.” The category is at the stage that OTT occupied in 2019 and podcasts in the same year: widely consumed, poorly named and not yet crystallised in the public imagination.
Platform awareness remains alarmingly thin. Only three platforms, Kuku TV at 78 per cent, Story TV at 46 per cent and Quick TV at 28 per cent, have crossed the 20 per cent awareness threshold. The rest languish in single digits. This creates a trust deficit that directly throttles monetisation: viewers who cannot remember which app they used are hardly primed to enter their payment details.
Yet the appetite is clearly there. Sixty-five per cent of viewers watch only Indian content, drawn by the TV-serial familiarity of the storytelling, the comfort of Hindi as a shared language and the sight of actors they half-recognise from decades of television. South languages are rising fast: Tamil, Telugu and Kannada together account for 24 per cent of first-choice viewing. And AI-generated content, still a novelty, has landed better than expected: 47 per cent of viewers call it creative and unique, with only 6 per cent actively rejecting it.
Shweta Bajpai, director, media and entertainment (India) at Meta, called micro drama “a category that is rewriting the rules of Indian entertainment,” adding that the discovery engine being social distinguishes this wave from previous content formats. Shailesh Kapoor, founder and chief executive of Ormax Media, was characteristically measured: the format, he said, is showing “the early signs of becoming a distinct content category” and, given how closely it aligns with natural mobile behaviour, “has the potential to scale very quickly.”
The format’s fundamental mechanics are working. It enters lives quietly, through boredom and a scrolling thumb, and burrows in through incompletion and habit. The challenge now is monetisation: converting a category of highly engaged but deeply anonymous viewers into paying customers who trust the platform enough to hand over their UPI credentials. The story, as any micro-drama writer knows, is only as good as the next cliffhanger. India’s platforms had better have one ready.
