On Sept 28, a Supreme Court Bench headed by Chief Justice Surya Kant asked the Centre to consider binding rules that would make 18 the minimum age for opening a social media account, because a minor cannot sign a contract under Indian law.The Solicitor General’s reply was unusually direct: “Something can be done, something should be done and will be done.”The case is about children, but the question beneath it concerns every Indian who owns a phone: ‘Who gets to shape what happens inside our heads?’In Nov 2025, with little fanfare, Unesco’s 194 member states adopted the first global standard on the ethics of neurotechnology, the devices that can read, and increasingly influence, brain activity.It warns, among other things, against using brain data in recommender systems to manipulate people. The human mind has become a subject of rights. For all of history, the space behind the forehead was the one place no ruler could search.That certainty is now fading, and not mainly because of brain implants. The bigger reason is already installed on nearly every Indian smartphone.It is the recommendation engine. The system is given one goal, to maximise engagement, and it chases that number with endless patience, learning what makes each user stop, scroll and come back.The engine is not evil. It simply obeys, and its goal is not the user’s well-being. A 2017 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed how well this works. Advertisements matched to people’s personalities, guessed from little more than their Facebook likes, reached 3.5 million people and drew up to 40% more clicks and 50% more purchases.The effects show up in daily life. Psychologist Gloria Mark found that the average time people stay on one screen before switching fell from about two and a half minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in recent years. Indians spent about five hours a day on their phones in 2024, according to an EY report, and nearly 70% of that time went to social media, games and video.In Puttaswamy (2017), a nine-judge Bench read the right to privacy into Article 21 and protected the citizen’s data. It was one of the Republic’s finest modern judgments. But the technology of the last decade raises a harder question.It is no longer only about who may see my information. It is about who may shape my wants. Scholars such as Daniel Susser, Beate Roessler and Helen Nissenbaum offer a workable test. Persuasion speaks to my reasons. Manipulation goes around them, quietly using one’s biases, habits and tiredness to produce choices one might not have really made.In 2017, neuroethicists Marcello Ienca and Roberto Andorno argued that cognitive liberty and mental privacy should be recognised as new human rights. The tradition that carried Article 21 from Maneka Gandhi (1978) to Puttaswamy can carry it one step further, to a freedom of the mind from hidden, engineered influence.The second argument is that the world has already moved, and India has taken the first step at home.In 2023, India’s Central Consumer Protection Authority named and restricted 13 “dark patterns”, deceptive designs that trick users into buying. The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023, goes further for children. It bars tracking, behavioural monitoring and targeted advertising aimed at them, with full effect from May 2027. The principle is already on our books, for the wallet and for the child. Extending it to the mind is one logical step, and India would be the first democracy of a billion people to take it.An engagement engine runs an experiment on a nation every hour. In a 2014 study, Facebook’s own researchers reported that they had altered the news feeds of 689,003 users for a week to see if they could shift their moods. They could, if only slightly. At Facebook’s scale, slightly is a lot.The third argument is about children, because here the danger is no longer abstract. Unesco reports that 58% of countries now ban phones in schools, up from about a quarter in 2023.Closer home, the Economic Survey 2025-26 called for age-based limits on social media, and Karnataka has announced a ban for children under 16. The instinct is the same everywhere: a child’s attention is not a commercial resource. The need is real. The ASER 2024 survey found that among rural 14- to 16-year-olds who could use a smartphone, 76% had used it for social media in the week before the survey, and only 57% for study.The rules the Supreme Court has asked for are a good start, but an age bar only decides who gets in. It says nothing about what the product does to those inside, adults included.Over the years, the Constitution has protected the citizen’s home, papers, body and data. Its next task is the room behind the forehead.A republic of free citizens must first be a republic of free minds.(Writer is an IAS officer and author of eight books on AI. Views are personal)
