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It will be no surprise to longtime readers of Canadian Affairs that we welcome Ottawa\u2019s new proposed social media legislation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Since our launch three years ago, we have been writing about<\/a> the harms of excessive social media and smartphone use, particularly to youth and children.<\/p>\n And so, the proposed Safe Social Media Act is an important \u2014 if overdue<\/a> \u2014 first step.<\/p>\n The government has billed the legislation as a preventative measure to protect children. But its potential is broader than that. If the implementing regulations are done well, the legislation could make both social media and AI chatbots less harmful to adults as well.<\/p>\n The headline change announced Wednesday is that children 15 and under would be prevented from having social media accounts. (However, this ban could be reversed if social media platforms were to demonstrate they have put appropriate safeguards in place.) It would also require platforms to prioritize children\u2019s safety when designing their products.<\/p>\n But the more interesting part is the broader duties the legislation would impose.\u00a0<\/p>\n Social media platforms would have an overarching duty to: protect children; to act responsibly (imagine that!); and to make harmful content inaccessible (such as deepfake sexual images or intimate content shared without consent).\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n AI chatbots, meanwhile, would have a duty to protect children; and a duty to act responsibly that is tailored to their specific services.<\/p>\n \u201c[AI chatbots] will be required to: mitigate the risk of the chatbot communicating harmful content; be transparent in terms of their reporting thresholds in crisis situations, such as when a user intends to harm themselves or another person; and mitigate the risk that the chatbot will engage in harmful behaviour,\u201d the government\u2019s press release says.<\/p>\n It is impossible to read this passage and not think of the tragic Tumbler Ridge shooting in B.C. this February.\u00a0<\/p>\n The shooter, it was later revealed, had engaged in concerning activity on OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT platform before the shooting. But OpenAI had determined the shooters\u2019 queries did not point to a credible or imminent attack, and therefore did not warrant notifying authorities.<\/p>\n Thank you for being a paid subscriber. Your support makes our original and Canadian-focused journalism possible. \ud83c\udde8\ud83c\udde6 <\/p>\n Subscribe to Editor’s Picks. Receive our free Saturday newsletter featuring our best stories from the week.<\/p>\n The duty that the new legislation would impose would presumably require AI chatbots to take steps to mitigate harm for all, regardless of whether a potential victim is a child or adult. If so, that would be a true achievement.\u00a0<\/p>\n Ottawa also deserves credit for including AI chatbots in the proposed legislation at all; this puts it a step ahead of jurisdictions that have already regulated social media harms \u2014 often before the harms of AI chatbots and AI companions had become well known.\u00a0<\/p>\n But recent research also serves as a reminder that laws can only do so much. They can address the most acute forms of harm, and force companies to make their products safer. But the products themselves \u2014 smartphones, social media and AI \u2014 will continue to exist, and in all likelihood, continue to be used ubiquitously.<\/p>\n And this has society-wide consequences. We have previously written about some of these consequences, such as low levels of happiness<\/a> and mental health<\/a> among young people globally.\u00a0<\/p>\n But new research points to another effect. Two academic<\/a> papers<\/a> and data journalism<\/a> from the Financial Times have found smartphones may explain plummeting birth rates globally.<\/p>\n The running thesis is that smartphones have dramatically reduced the amount of time people spend socializing in person, which has in turn affected how many people end up with partners and therefore have children.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo meet a person you are going to marry requires filtering through a lot of people,\u201d demographer Lyman Stone told the Financial Times. \u201cIf you socialise much less, it takes you much longer to find a match if you find one at all.\u201d<\/p>\n The legislation that Ottawa announced this week would, at best, affect a trend of this magnitude at the margins.\u00a0<\/p>\n For instance, forcing platforms to design their products to be less addictive (by removing the infinite scroll, or removing the auto-play feature on videos) could cut down on the amount of time people spend on these platforms. But it will not destroy these products\u2019 overall attraction and pull.<\/p>\n And the government is unlikely to \u2014 and likely shouldn\u2019t \u2014 go further than this. There are limits to what a government in a free society can reasonably mandate.<\/p>\n And so it will come down to civil society, schools, families and individuals themselves to take ownership over the problems that these remarkable \u2014 but harmful \u2014 devices have unleashed.\u00a0<\/p>\n