Meet the Crusaders Behind India’s Social Media-for-Children Debate: Lawyer Mom Kirti Dua and Paediatrician Dr Sharad Gupta

A three-year-old cannot vote, drive a car or sign a legal contract.

But give that child a smartphone and, within seconds, an algorithm can begin deciding what videos appear next, what advertisements are shown and what keeps the screen from being switched off.

That unsettling reality has sparked arguments in homes, schools and doctors' clinics across the world.

In India, it also landed in court.

At the centre of that legal battle are two people who are neither politicians nor technology executives: Kirti Dua, a lawyer and mother, and Dr Sharad Gupta, a paediatrician.

Together, they have become the public faces of a campaign seeking stronger safeguards for children online and stricter rules governing how young users access social media platforms.

The Delhi High Court recently considered their concerns. It did not ban social media for children. It did not create a minimum-age rule. Instead, it said the issue was ultimately a matter of policy for the government to decide.

But before the debate became a legal question, it began with two individuals asking a simple one: How safe is the internet for children?

Who is Kirti Dua?

Court records and reports identify Kirti Dua as one of the petitioners behind the legal challenge. She is also the mother of a three-year-old child.

That detail matters.

The petition was not framed merely as an abstract legal dispute about technology regulation. It emerged from concerns many parents recognise immediately: children are encountering screens earlier, spending more time online and gaining access to platforms originally built for adults.

Professionally, Dua is an advocate who practises before higher courts and has built a career in the legal profession.

But in this case, she entered the public conversation not primarily as a lawyer, but as a parent worried about the digital environment children are growing up in.

Her petition argued that existing safeguards were not enough to prevent minors from accessing age-inappropriate content, cyberbullying, addictive platform features and other online risks.

Who is Dr Sharad Gupta?

If Dua brought a parent's perspective, Dr Sharad Gupta brought a doctor's.

Gupta is a paediatrician who has spent years treating children and observing the challenges affecting their physical and emotional well-being.

For a paediatrician, concerns about children's health traditionally revolved around nutrition, disease, vaccination and development.

Now there is another factor sitting quietly in many homes: the smartphone.

Doctors around the world have increasingly raised concerns about excessive screen time, sleep disruption, social-media dependency, online harassment and the mental-health impact of digital platforms on children and adolescents.

Gupta's involvement gave the petition a medical dimension.

The case was no longer simply asking whether children should be allowed on social media. It was also asking whether unrestricted digital exposure could affect their health and development.

What exactly did they want?

The pair approached the Delhi High Court seeking a nationwide framework to better protect children online.

They argued that social-media platforms should not be able to rely on little more than a self-declared age box to determine whether a user is a child.

Think about that for a moment.

The internet's most common age-verification tool often boils down to a question: "Are you old enough?"

A child can enter a false birth date in seconds.

That, the petitioners argued, creates a gap between what the rules say and what actually happens online.

The plea sought restrictions on social-media access for children below 13 years of age, stronger age-verification systems, parental-consent mechanisms and greater accountability for technology companies.

The petition named several government agencies as well as major technology firms, including Meta, Alphabet-owned Google entities, Telegram, Snap and X.

What did the Delhi High Court say?

The court agreed that the concerns raised were serious.

But it stopped short of creating new rules from the Bench.

A Division Bench of Justices V Kameswar Rao and Manmeet Pritam Singh Arora held that questions involving age restrictions, parental consent, verification systems and platform obligations required policy-making rather than judicial law-making.

In simple terms, the court said: these are decisions for the government.

The Bench therefore disposed of the petition while leaving it open to the Centre to examine the issues, consult stakeholders and decide whether further regulation is required.

So no, India has not banned social media for children.

Not yet.

Why this case matters beyond the courtroom

The significance of Kirti Dua and Dr Sharad Gupta extends beyond the outcome of a single petition.

Their case has pushed a larger question into the national conversation.

Countries around the world are wrestling with the same dilemma. Australia has introduced strict age-based restrictions for certain social-media platforms. France has debated similar measures. Governments, parents, doctors and technology companies remain divided over what works best: outright bans, parental controls, stronger age verification or safer platform design.

India is now part of that debate.

And at the centre of it are a lawyer who is also a mother and a paediatrician who sees children every day.

Neither controls a social-media platform.

Neither writes government policy.

Yet together they succeeded in doing something significant: forcing one of the biggest questions of the digital age into India's legal and public spotlight.

Because beneath the legal filings, court hearings and policy discussions lies a question that millions of parents already ask themselves every evening when a child picks up a phone:

At what point does a screen stop being a tool and start becoming an influence?

(With inputs from ANI)