{"id":3365,"date":"2026-04-13T20:37:17","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:37:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/3365\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T20:37:17","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T20:37:17","slug":"a-canadian-youth-social-media-ban-would-be-complicated-experts-say","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/3365\/","title":{"rendered":"A Canadian youth social media ban would be complicated, experts say"},"content":{"rendered":"

Members of the Liberal party voted in favour of setting 16 as the age for Canadians to be able to use social media<\/a> accounts at the federal policy convention on Saturday \u2014 but experts say it\u2019s not that simple.<\/p>\n

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Quebec MP Rachel Bendayan, who presented the idea<\/a> to her caucus and championed it at the convention, said prolonged social media use can be harmful to the mental health of young Canadians.<\/p>\n

This comes as Australia\u2019s current social media ban<\/a> for youth under 16 years old continues to spur debate in a growing number of countries about whether to follow suit.<\/p>\n

In addition, it raises the question of how age verification and implementation could be enforced if such a ban were to be enacted, which would still require Prime Minister Mark Carney and the federal government to put forward proposals to do so.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\tWhy do many want a social media ban for kids?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

An Angus Reid Institute poll<\/a> released in March had found that \u201cbanning those under 16 from platforms would be well received by the vast majority of Canadians,\u201d with three-quarters (75 per cent) say they support a \u201cfull ban on social media use for anyone under the age of 16.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among parents with kids in the household, support is also strong at 70 per cent.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0September 2025 Ipsos poll<\/a> has also found an average of 71 per cent<\/a> across 30 countries believe children under 14 \u201cshould not be able to access social media,\u201d with 74 per cent of school-age parents feeling the same.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five per cent of those surveyed also stated that social media is a \u201ctop challenge\u201d for young people.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the same way that we have concerns when there\u2019s a dangerous activity that we want to make sure that we protect children from, like drinking or smoking or driving a car or any of these other things, we put rules in place so that we make sure that people are fully matured and fully developed before they start to engage in what we have identified to be dangerous practice,\u201d said David Gerhard,\u00a0the head of computer science at the University of Manitoba.<\/p>\n

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He also said that enacting such a ban could help protect children\u2019s digital identities as they grow older, calling it a \u201cdigital amnesty.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you turn 16, everything that you did before gets erased and you start fresh, or you invent a new persona and you just start again,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cThe history of the dumb things we do when we\u2019re kids can stick with us if we\u2019re not given a chance to reinvent ourselves when we find out who we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Click<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1:57
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAustria becomes latest country to pass social media restrictions for kids\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tWhat would age verification look like in Canada?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Matt Hatfield, an executive director at Open Media, says that there are three main means being utilized in Australia to confirm users\u2019 ages that could be replicated in Canada.<\/p>\n

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\u201cEither providing some kind of government ID or an age estimation done by an algorithm, generally of someone\u2019s appearance,\u201d he said. \u201cOr it\u2019s indicators about an account; so, they don\u2019t actually even contact the user, they just look at who the person\u2019s following, what other accounts they\u2019re connected with, and make a judgment of whether it\u2019s likely a young person\u2019s account or an adult\u2019s account based on that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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He added: \u201cIn Australia, they kind of went to the companies and said, \u2018We want you to take a mix of these methods to determine whether someone\u2019s a young person\u2019s account or adult\u2019s accounts. We only want government ID as a last resort and we don\u2019t want any adults, clearly adult accounts to be forced to provide their ID.’\u201d<\/p>\n

Gerhard believes that a \u201cthird-party private organization will build some tool that the government will then buy to do the age verification.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have our social insurance number, which is just a number. Then when you get to be of a driver\u2019s age, you get a driver\u2019s licence or a learner\u2019s permit or some other ID that identifies you and has your photograph on it. But we don\u2019t really have that for children yet,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019d (have) to have a software development company who we trust to own all of the IDs of everybody in the country and then validate against every login.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIs a ban on social media use among youths enforceable in Canada?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\tWould bans actually improve social media?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\tMore on Canada
\n\t\t\tMore videos\n\t\t<\/p>\n

On March 24,<\/a> a New Mexico jury declared after a seven-week trial that social media\u00a0conglomerate\u00a0Meta<\/a> is \u201charmful to children\u2019s mental health and in violation of state consumer protection law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jurors sided with state prosecutors who argued that Meta \u2014 which owns Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp \u2014 prioritized \u201cprofits over safety.\u201d<\/p>\n

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There are currently lawyers in British Columbia are also suing<\/a> Meta in a proposed class action civil suit, which could include thousands of children across the country.<\/p>\n

The lawsuit accuses Meta, through its Facebook and Instagram platforms, of exposing children to \u201charmful content,\u201d like images and videos promoting \u201chigh-risk behaviour, such as risky challenges or extreme dieting, as well as health misinformation and content which caused or aggravated psychological insecurities, including anxiety about body image.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta denies the allegations, none of which have been proven in court.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSocial media lawsuits under the spotlight\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Recovery Alberta<\/a>, a mental health and addiction service, states that 43 per cent of teens using social media hourly, also stating that \u201coveruse of social networking platforms, particularly among youth, negatively impacts life satisfaction, leading to issues like sedentary lifestyles, sleep disturbances, and isolation.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This is something that Hatfield believes would need careful regulation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf we look at the example of how we regulate around alcohol, you don\u2019t turn 16 or 18 and suddenly anything that occurs in the alcohol industry is fair game,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have safety laws around how alcohol is produced. And from a media\u2019s perspective, it would be more reasonable than a ban that\u2019s defined by age, to look at some of the predictable harms that are being created by the business decisions of these platforms and regulate around that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Christopher Dietzel, a communication studies affiliate assistant professor at Concordia University, believes that although there is \u201can urgency for action to be taken here in Canada,\u201d a ban would not be the right move to make.<\/p>\n

\u201cA proposed solution like a social media ban, it does nothing to prepare young people to actually address these harms. There\u2019s no education, there\u2019s no awareness raising, it doesn\u2019t take advantage of the time then that you know you would have to be of a certain age,\u201d said Dietzel.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is nothing that actually helps young people to identify and address these harms.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Dietzel also believes that such a ban would not include holding social media companies responsible for adapting their product to be more child-friendly.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt [a social media ban] doesn\u2019t hold technology companies accountable for removing the harms for changing their policies for improving their systems provide, for providing better features more safety measures,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is nothing of the sort to actually remove those harms or address those harms in a systematic way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Members of the Liberal party voted in favour of setting 16 as the age for Canadians to be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[17,226,2132,1194,2133,2134],"class_list":{"0":"post-3365","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-canada","8":"tag-canada","9":"tag-lifestyle","10":"tag-meta","11":"tag-social-media","12":"tag-social-media-ban","13":"tag-tech"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}