The Karnataka High Court observed that an age limit needs to be imposed for the use of social media which is close to the legal age for consuming alcohol.
Under Section 69A of the Information Technology Act, the Ministry of Information and Technology issued 10 government orders between February 2, 2021 and February 28, 2022 where the direction was to block 1,474 accounts, 175 tweets, 256 URLs and one hashtag. Twitter, now known as X, challenged the order.
As per the court, they observed 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,” a Moneycontrol report stated.
The counsel of the microblogging platform argued that the ministry had not informed the users about blocking their tweets and accounts and the platform was forbidden from informing them. However, the HC suggested that the government tone down its rules where the platform should not be left marooned.