PIL in Delhi HC against ‘infinite scroll’, ‘autoplay’ in social media apps

A petition has been filed in the Delhi High Court seeking the constitution of an expert committee to examine engagement-maximising and addiction-causing design features on social media platforms like infinite scroll and autoplay.

The public interest litigation (PIL) came up for hearing before a bench of Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya and Justice Tejas Karia.

Justice Karia, however, recused from hearing the plea, which will now be heard next week before another bench.

Petitioner Vikas Kathuria, a professor of law at BML Munjal University, said the fulcrum of the issue is not what content social media platforms carry, but how such platforms are architecturally designed to cause addiction through infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmically curated and personalised feeds, notification systems and variable-reward engagement metrics, such as “likes”, to capture, retain and repeatedly re-stimulate the attention of the user.

The plea said the concern assumes significance in the Indian context as statistics reveal that Indian youths aged 18-24 spend more than 120 minutes on average every day on social media.

It has been clinically proven that long hours on social media have been linked to suicide and depression among adolescents, the petition said.

The plea sought the court’s direction to the central government and the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights to restrict, prohibit, or regulate the use of infinite scroll, autoplay, algorithmically curated feeds and persistent notifications.