Can we regulate attention?

In today’s episode on 23rd Feb 2026, we talk about the ongoing calls to regulate social media usage for teenagers around the world. ⁠Book a Free call with Ditto⁠ https://ditto.sh/vx51ji https://ditto.sh/vx51ji

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Hello folks, you're tuned in different shots daily. In today's episode, we talk about the ongoing calls to regulate social media usage for teenagers.

• 0:10Speaker 00

  Before we begin, here's a quick word from team Ditto. Life has a way of surprising us and not always in a good way. Sometimes it's a sudden illness or an unexpected hospital visit that can shake up everything. In India, families still pay about 39% of medical expenses directly from their own pockets and just one hospital's take can wipe out years of savings. The easiest way to protect yourself is by getting a good health insurance plan. It's way cheaper than footing one huge bill. And if you're unaware where to start, book a free call with Ditto. No spam, just honest, jargon-free guidance. Trusted by over 8 lakh people for their health and term insurance needs. The link is in the description. Now, back to the story. Over the last few weeks, something interesting has been unfolding across the world.

• 0:56Speaker 00

  What began as a familiar moral panic about teenagers glued to their phones has started to turn into policy. Australia has passed a law banning social media for children under 16. France has restricted access for those under 15. Florida has enacted its own age-based prohibition. The UK and the United States are also debating similar measures. And what makes this particularly interesting to us is that India is also considering similar age-based restrictions. On the one hand, the government spoke about nurturing the orange economy. We explained this in detail before, but in a nutshell, it is nothing but supporting the creative economy, promoting influencers and even setting up social media labs in schools. On the other hand, there is growing discussion about restricting social media access for those very students.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  You see, globally, tech giants are fighting thousands of lawsuits alleging that their algorithms amplify addiction, anxiety and depression among teenagers. And the conversation is often framed as mental health versus digital freedom. However, underneath that framing lies a larger economy question. What happens when a country with India's demographic profile decides to limit youth access to the attention economy? Let's start with what the government thinks. A report by the AASR estimates that 57% of children aged 14 to 16 use smartphones for educational purposes.

• 2:10Speaker 00

  However, over seventy-five percent of the same children use smartphones for social media. India's Economic Survey has also warned that compulsive screen use and digital addiction impose measurable economic costs. Social media platforms are engineered around engagement, comparison, validation loops, and constant stimulation are their core features. So, even if a portion of rising adolescent anxiety, body image distress, and depressive symptoms is linked to prolonged social media exposure, then the long-term economic implications are substantial. Because mental health problems don't remain private issues, they translate into lower educational outcomes, reduced workforce participation, higher healthcare expenditure, and diminished productivity. Social media also comes with a cognitive cost. How many times have we scrolled through Twitter or Instagram in the middle of the night?

• 2:53Speaker 00

  The excessive screen time induces sleep debt and reduces your overall productivity the next day. This eventually leads to a vicious cycle where fatigue makes you more prone to distraction, pushing you back to the same apps for stimulation, further eroding focus, decision-making ability, and your mental well-being. From this perspective, regulation begins to look less like moral policing and more like preventive economic policy. If limiting early exposure improves human capital formation in the long term, then a state may see intervention as an investment in future productivity, and they're not wrong. Yet the counter-arguments are equally significant. First, multiple research papers link social media use to mental health outcomes in a correlational rather than cause-and-effect way. Teenagers who are already vulnerable may be more likely to engage heavily with social media.

• 3:38Speaker 00

  That makes it difficult to determine whether platforms cause distress or merely amplify pre-existing conditions. Designing sweeping prohibitions based on incomplete casual evidence risks oversimplifying a complex behavioral issue. However, the same research mentions that we need to dig deeper into this, so let's not rule it out. Second, prohibition rarely eliminates behavior. VPNs, encrypted messaging apps, secondary accounts, and less regulated platforms are easily accessible. So, an outright ban or even heavy regulation could drive underground usage, reducing parental oversight and platform accountability at the same time. So, in an attempt to protect adolescents, regulators may inadvertently push them towards spaces with fewer safeguards, and this is even more dangerous. Third, social media is not merely a leisure activity.

• 4:23Speaker 00

  Nearly ninety percent of teenagers aged fourteen to sixteen now have smartphone access and a majority use social platforms regularly. For brands, this cohort represents a distinct consumer segment whose tastes, aspirations and purchasing habits are shaped online. The youth discover products, services, music, fashion and career pathways through a digital exposure. A heavy-handed ban would remove a primary discovery channel, forcing brands to find alternative routes that are often more expensive and less efficient. Marketing costs could rise and small creators who rely on young audiences might struggle to survive. And above all, there is also a deeper privacy concern embedded in enforcement. Age-based prohibitions require age verification. Now, how would that work in practice?

• 5:06Speaker 00

  Would users need to submit Aadhaar details or birth certificates to private corporations? How would regulators distinguish between personal accounts and brand accounts run by same individual? Any system robust enough to verify age at scale could also centralize vast amounts of sensitive data. That opens new risks around surveillance, data misuse and potential suppression of dissent. And these challenges, folks, highlight the broader dilemma. Regulating attention is not like regulating alcohol or tobacco. Attention is tied to speech, commerce, identity, innovation and a lot more. Social media is both a public square and a marketplace. It shapes mental health outcomes, but it also shapes economic participation. The economic consequences of the restriction would therefore be multi-layered. On the positive side, reduced exposure could lower mental health costs, strengthen concentration and improve educational attainment.

• 5:51Speaker 00

  On the negative side, it could also slow down the knowledge economy, narrow informal entrepreneurship opportunities and increase friction in youth-oriented markets. For a country like India, where the demographic dividend is a primary driver of growth, this trade-off becomes even sharper. Young Indians are not just users of social media, they are creators, small business owners, freelancers and digital natives whose economic lives are intertwined with online platforms. Restricting access may protect some from harm while simultaneously limiting the channels through which others build careers. A blanket prohibition or even a heavy restriction therefore functions as a blunt instrument. It may address visible harms but create invisible ones. The challenge lies in designing regulations that mitigate. ...addictive design patterns without dismantling digital participation entirely.

• 6:34Speaker 00

  A possible solution is to make social media algorithms open source, meaning their source code is publicly available for inspection, modification and redistribution, or at the very least make them more transparent. This would allow independent researchers to audit them for bias and manipulation and enable public scrutiny over how attention is shaped and monetized. This also fosters a competitive pressure on platforms to prioritize user wellbeing over just engagement metrics. Apart from this, platforms could implement stricter parental controls, time-based limits and restrictions that parents can impose rather than the state. However, this debate is unlikely to resolve into a simple yes or no. The question is not whether social media has risks, it clearly does. The question is whether restriction by the government is the most rational way to address those risks. Thank you for listening to today's episode.

• 7:18Speaker 00

  And if you want to share your feedback or suggestions, do drop us an email to [email protected]. Until next time.