When Meta India’s senior representatives were summoned before the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights over allegations linking Instagram advertisements to child sexual exploitation material, it surfaced a question far larger than one platform’s compliance failure. Should age stop being a demographic input in advertising systems and start becoming the internet’s foundational permission layer? This Storyboard18 feature explores that question in depth, featuring Mihir Mehta, Managing Partner at 0101.Today, who argues that the more important regulatory frontier is not ad targeting restrictions but what platforms are allowed to infer from behaviour, how recommendation engines respond to younger users, and how aggressively they can be monetised. Mehta makes a pointed case that for younger audiences, knowing less about the individual may actually be the more responsible design choice, a significant departure from digital advertising’s long-held assumption that more behavioural data is inherently better. Set against the backdrop of Meta’s multi-billion dollar settlement in the United States and escalating regulatory action in India, the piece asks whether the next internet will finally have age written into its foundations rather than bolted on as an afterthought.
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