Law teacher moves Delhi High Court to regulate addictive features of social media platforms

A public interest litigation (PIL) has been filed before the Delhi High Court raising concerns over addictive design features of social media platforms and their impact on young users’ mental health [Dr. Vikas Kathuria v. Union of India & Ors].

A Bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia will hear the petition on Wednesday.

The PIL, filed by Vikas Kathuria, a law professor at BML Munjal University, has also sought compensation from Meta, Google, Telegram, X and Snapchat for addiction and mental health issues caused by their features.

The petition states that social media platforms are designed to cause addiction in young users. He has raised concerns regarding the impact of prolonged and excessive social media use on mental health, well-being and the development of children and young persons.

According to the plea, features of scrolling, autoplay, algorithmically curated personalised feeds, notification system, engagement metrics such as “likes” are intended to capture, retain and re-stimulate the attention of users.

“The aforesaid features are not the incidental by-product of engineering convenience but are deliberate design choices, consciously engineered to maximise user engagement and thereby advertising revenue without any regard to the psychological and physiological consequences visited upon the users,” the petition states.

Kathuria has sought directions to the Central government to constitute an expert committee to examine the design features on social media platforms and make recommendations to deal with the issue.

Further, the petitioner has also sought creation of a mental health redressal fund to address the impact of such social media features on mental health of users.

The petitioner has further prayed for directions to the Union government and other concerned authorities to restrict, prohibit or regulate such design features.

The PIL was filed through Advocates Kartika Sharma, Harsha Sadhwani and Subhika Joshi.