New Delhi: India’s Gen Z population, estimated at around 407 million people aged 14 to 29 years or nearly 28 per cent of the national population according to UN World Population Prospects data, forms a decisive demographic for the coming decades. A recent analysis argues that the group’s heavy reliance on social media exposes it to algorithmically curated content that prioritises engagement over accuracy.
An article published by Indian Narrative, authored by Lt Gen (retired) Abhay Krishna, cites an IIM Rohtak study in which nearly 39,000 respondents aged 18 to 25 reported an average daily screen time of about seven hours, with substantial portions spent on social platforms. When hundreds of millions of young people devote this volume of attention to algorithm-driven feeds, the content they encounter cannot be treated as a neutral reflection of reality, the article contends.
It describes these algorithms as systems optimised for attention. Rather than prioritising what is true or socially beneficial, they are designed to maximise the time users spend scrolling so that more advertisements can be sold. “The core issue is that algorithm-driven social media is not a neutral mirror of reality but it is, rather, designed to maximise engagement and that design often rewards outrage, polarisation and emotionally charged content,” the article states. In practice, it argues, this can distort public debate, suppress inconvenient information and intensify real-world tensions.
The analysis refers to international examples. In the United States, disclosures related to the Twitter Files raised questions about how platform decisions around certain political stories were influenced by internal policies and external pressure. Meta has faced criticism over the role of its recommendation systems in amplifying harmful content, including in Myanmar, where UN investigators and an Amnesty International report concluded that algorithms contributed to the spread of anti-Rohingya hate speech.
Similar dynamics, the article suggests, have been observed in South Asia. It points to rapid mobilisation of young people through platforms such as TikTok and Discord during episodes of unrest in Nepal and Bangladesh, arguing that the platforms did not merely transmit information but helped structure the emotional sequence of events. In the Indian context, it links Instagram Reels, AI-generated videos and coordinated influencer networks to the scaling of the recent NEET paper-leak protests, noting that deepfake content and misinformation circulated widely, some of it later traced to foreign-linked accounts.
The article maintains that these systems now sit at the centre of political and social life for one of the world’s largest youth cohorts, shaping what hundreds of millions of Indians see and respond to for several hours each day. The organisations that control the platforms, it argues, exercise a form of soft power that democratic governments have yet to fully constrain.
Rather than advocating outright bans, which it says could provoke generational resistance and political costs, the analysis suggests exploring alternative approaches. These include legal frameworks, economic leverage, infrastructural measures and narrative strategies aimed at greater accountability without crude prohibition.
The piece underscores a broader debate about the tension between engagement-driven platform design and the quality of information reaching a large, digitally active young population. While social media has enabled rapid mobilisation around genuine grievances, the article cautions that the same mechanisms can amplify polarising or false content at scale.