ecent discussions around restricting children’s access to social media reflect a growing anxiety about online harm, raising difficult questions about how best to protect children without undermining their rights. Parents worry about cyber-bullying, sexual exploitation, harassment, exposure to harmful content and the impact of digital platforms on children’s mental health. These concerns are legitimate. The digital environment has become central to children’s lives and safeguards have failed to keep pace with the risks they face.

However, restricting access through blanket bans is not the solution. Prohibiting children under a certain age from using social media may appear decisive, but it is neither effective nor aligned with a child-rights-based approach. More importantly, it risks diverting attention from the real challenge, Pakistan’s lack of a coherent, comprehensive framework for protecting children in digital spaces.

The digital environment was not originally designed for children. However, it now shapes how they learn, communicate, seek help and participate in a society. Any policy response must, therefore, begin with the best interests of the child as a primary consideration, assessed in context, rather than through an adult-centric lens that prioritises control over children’s lived realities. A one-size-fits-all ban fails this test. It treats all children as identical, ignores their evolving capacities and overlooks the ways digital access supports education, peer connection, skill development, creative expression and civic engagement, particularly where such opportunities are limited offline.

From a practical standpoint, blanket bans are also technically difficult to enforce in Pakistan’s digital ecosystem. Children access the internet through shared devices, informal networks, cybercafés, VPNs and platforms beyond effective local oversight. Prohibition is likely to push use underground, reducing opportunities for guidance and safeguarding while increasing exposure to unregulated and unsafe spaces. This creates an illusion of safety without addressing underlying risks.

Proponents of bans often point to debates in high-income countries. However, these discussions are unfolding within regulatory environments marked by strong data protection laws, independent oversight and enforceable platform accountability. Transplanting selective measures without comparable safeguards risks undermining children’s rights rather than strengthening protection.

A more effective approach is already well articulated in international child rights standards. The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child has made it clear that children’s rights apply fully in the digital environment, including the rights to information, privacy, protection from harm and participation. Protection must go hand in hand with access, empowerment and accountability. Governments are therefore required not to exclude children from digital spaces, but to make those spaces safer.

This demands comprehensive policy and strategy, not ad hoc restrictions. Children’s online protection should be integrated within national and provincial child protection frameworks, supported by clear regulation, enforceable standards and coordinated action across institutions. Digital safety cannot be treated as a narrow technology issue; it is a child protection issue that intersects with education, law enforcement, social services and regulation. This requires clear leadership, institutional coordination and sustained political commitment to ensure that child online safety is addressed as a governance priority, not a reactive response.

A central pillar of this approach is platform accountability. Digitally facilitated violence against children is real and serious. Online platforms can enable sexual exploitation, grooming, cyber-harassment, gender-based violence, extortion and the promotion of self-harm. These harms often occur within a child’s circle of trust and are exacerbated during crises when children spend more time online. Yet these risks persist not because children are online, but because platforms operate with weak safeguards and limited accountability.

The appropriate response lies in stronger regulation that places clear obligations on platforms to adopt age-appropriate design, improve content moderation, ensure accessible reporting mechanisms and respond decisively to online abuse and exploitation. Where children are involved in harmful online behaviour, responses should be preventive and restorative, not punitive. Criminalisation or exclusion does not address trauma or prevent future harm.

Another critical and often overlooked dimension is privacy. Many restrictive proposals rely on age verification, identity checks or increased surveillance. These measures carry serious risks for children’s privacy and safety, particularly in contexts where data protection safeguards are weak. Children’s personal data, including identity, location, communication and biometric information, can be misused or retained indefinitely, with long-term consequences.

Protecting children online cannot mean exposing them to intrusive surveillance. Privacy is essential to children’s dignity, agency and safety. Children also need private digital spaces to seek information, access counselling or helplines and communicate safely, especially where family environments may be unsafe. Policies that expand surveillance in the name of protection risk silencing children and cutting off access to support.

Digital literacy and parental support must also be treated as public responsibilities. Children need age-appropriate education to navigate risks, recognise manipulation and seek help. Parents and caregivers need guidance to support children without resorting to excessive monitoring that undermines trust and privacy. This requires investment in child-centred digital literacy programmes, clearer regulatory mandates for platforms and coordination across education, child protection and regulatory institutions.

Crucially, children themselves must be part of the conversation. Policies affecting children’s digital lives are too often developed without listening to their experiences. Yet children are best placed to explain how they use digital platforms, what risks they encounter and what protections would actually work. Meaningful child participation leads to better, more grounded policy outcomes.

The debate on children and social media must therefore move beyond simplistic binaries of access versus safety. The real choice is between reactive bans and thoughtful regulation. One path offers the comfort of appearing tough while leaving systemic failures untouched. The other requires sustained effort, coordination and political will, but holds the potential to genuinely protect children.

Protecting children online does not require pushing them offline. It requires building digital environments governed by accountability, guided by the best interests of the child, respectful of privacy, responsive to violence and designed to uphold children’s rights in the digital age. The challenge before Pakistan is not whether to act, but how to act wisely.

The writer is the executive director of Search for Justice. He has over 18 years of experience in human rights and child rights policy, governance and institutional reform. He can be reached at iftikhar.mubarik @sfjpk.org