Calls for tackling rising digital addiction as it hits academic performance, productivity
New Delhi: Taking cues for social media ban for children, the government’s Economic Survey on Thursday said age-based access to online platforms should be considered while also cutting down online teaching to avoid digital addiction.
The Survey tabled in Parliament called for schools to play a critical role in shaping digital habits of children and promoting simpler devices for children for educational content access to prevent their exposure to harmful content online. “Policies on age-based access limits may be considered, as younger users are more vulnerable to compulsive use and harmful content. Platforms should be made responsible for enforcing age verification and age-appropriate defaults, particularly for social media, gambling apps, auto-play features, and targeted advertising,” the Survey said.
The Survey said online platforms should be made responsible for enforcing age verification and simpler devices should be promoted for children to access educational content with safeguards to address rising problem digital addiction.
The Survey has identified digital addiction as a rising problem impacting mental health of youth and adults.
The Survey has called for educating families and encouraged them to promote screentime limits, device-free hours, and shared offline activities.
During a media interaction after the release of the Survey, chief economic advisor V Anantha Nageswaran said he has heard that the Andhra Pradesh and Goa governments are mulling ideas to come up with a policy on age-based access to online platforms. “But as I said, some of these things need not necessarily be only at the policy level.
These are aspects to be dealt with by civil societies, educational institutions, parents themselves and policy can help,” he said.
Asked if the government is contemplating a policy like the one in place in Australia on use of social media by children, he said, “I don’t have any idea whether the government of India is contemplating something like that.”
“Schools play a critical role in shaping digital habits and should introduce a digital wellness curriculum covering screentime literacy, cyber safety, and mental health awareness. Dependence on online teaching tools, which expanded during Covid-19, should be reduced in favour of offline engagement,” it said.
It has called for conducting parental workshops through schools and community centres to train guardians in setting healthy boundaries, recognising signs of addiction, and using parental control tools effectively.
“Promoting simpler devices for children, such as basic phones or education-only tablets, along with enforced usage limits and content filters, can further reduce exposure to harmful material, including violent, sexual, or gambling-related content,” the Survey said.
It said network layer safeguards, such as internet service provider-level interventions, that can complement such measures by offering family data plans with differentiated quotas for educational versus recreational apps and default blocking of high-risk categories, with opt-in overrides available to guardians.
The Survey noted measures by various countries, including Australia, China, and South Korea, and called for several interventions, besides ongoing efforts of various government departments.
Economic Survey cautions on uncertainties as AI structures evolve
New Delhi: The Economic Survey has flagged “looming uncertainties” and “asymmetries” in the evolving AI landscape, drawing attention to issues from concentration of market power in hands of few large global frontier model builders, to labour dynamics, and all the way to questions around future of the Indian IT sector.
While India enters the AI era with notable strengths, access to cutting-edge compute infrastructure is limited and financial resources for large-scale model training remains scarce compared to global leaders, making pursuit of foundational models as the centrepiece of AI strategy “challenging”, the Survey said.
Instead, it advocated a bottom-up approach to AI development saying it aligns more closely with economic realities.
Value creation in AI need not be concentrated in a small number of frontier models or firms, it said speaking out in favour of application-specific, small models that are tailored to defined uses and sectoral needs.
Amid evolution of global AI structures, the survey highlighted a dangerous concentration of power where control over critical inputs – data, compute, and foundational models – is held by a few global entities.
On labour market implication, it said while the emerging evidence has provided some reassurance in the near term for economies such as India, there is no room for complacency, especially from a policymaker’s perspective.
“All in all, caution is still warranted as India attempts to solve the puzzle of AI and labour. This represents one of the most considerable looming uncertainties about the technology,” the Survey said.
