ESYA DISPATCH | March 2026 - Week 3
Welcome to The Esya Dispatch, a weekly snapshot of the policy debates shaping India’s digital economy. Each edition brings together key developments in technology policy, from platform governance and AI regulation to data protection and competition —along with the Esya Centre’s perspective on what they mean for innovation, businesses, and users.
Here’s a quick recap of two key tech policy developments from the past week:
One-fifth Australian children still use TikTok, Snapchat despite social media ban
A study found that a fifth of teenagers below 16 continue to use social media in Australia, despite the country having enacted a social media ban for children below this age. Since the ban took effect, the number of users aged 13-15 using Snapchat reduced by only 13.8 percentage points, while those using TikTok and YouTube reduced by just 5.7 and 1 percentage points respectively. However, even these meagre dips in usage are now beginning to recover. Australia’s eSafety Commissioner has stated that it is actively engaging with platforms and their age-assurance providers regarding the presence of under-16 users on social media.
The findings from Australia come as states like Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh consider banning social media for younger users, and the central government reportedly explores graded restrictions for children. Our survey suggests that children will likely find ways around such rules.
ESYA’S TAKE: Banning social media may not be an effective way to keep children safe online. Notably, the Esya Centre’s own survey of 1,000 Indian children aged 10–15 shows why a ban is unlikely to work. For one, many children are more tech-savvy than policymakers assume—69% said they were comfortable changing settings on their social media accounts. We also found that children may also easily bypass age-gating mechanisms, with 71% accessing social media through a family member’s account. At the same time, bans could cut children off from positive online spaces: 55% of respondents said they had meaningful interactions with strangers online.
MeitY meets industry stakeholders regarding bot amplification, deepfake regulation
The Secretary of the Ministry of Electronics and IT, S Krishnan, recently held a meeting with stakeholders discussing the role of bot accounts in amplifying misleading information online. In the meeting, the government sought details on whether platforms possessed sufficient resources to curb such bot networks and enquired whether there is a need for a new policy or regulation to address this issue. The government also discussed the regulation of AI-generated deepfakes, asking whether copyright law or personality rights could be used to counter any synthetic content based on the likeness of a person.
ESYA’S TAKE: Letting people use copyright law to block the use of their likeness could create tensions between the rights of different stakeholders. Normally, features like a person’s face or voice are protected through personality rights, not copyright. Additionally, copyright usually belongs to the person who created the work – for instance, the copyright over a person’s image lies with the photographer. Thus, if individuals are allowed to claim copyright over their personal characteristics, it could trigger a conflict with creators’ intellectual property rights.