Kids in Manitoba are about to find out what it was like growing up in a world without TikTok or ChatGPT.
What happened: In a Canadian first, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced that the province will implement a ban on social media and AI chatbots for minors, though he didn’t specify the age of the ban or how it will be enforced.
The federal government is also “very seriously” considering similar regulations on social media and AI chatbots, according to Heritage Minister Marc Miller.
Why it matters: Countless studies now show social media’s negative effects on children’s mental health and development. The real question is whether governments can make an outright ban work in practice. So far, the answer has been: not really.
Australia, which enacted a first-of-its-kind social media ban for kids under 16 in December, has struggled to enforce it. According to a report last month, 70% of Australian kids who had a social media account pre-ban still have access to it.
The report found that the age-verification systems being used by tech companies in Australia are deeply flawed, and that some platforms have even encouraged kids to retry verification several times until they eventually get approved.
Zoom out: Australia has largely relied on tech giants to police the ban (with only the thin threat of a fine to motivate them), but other countries are taking a different approach. The EU, which is considering a bloc-wide youth social media ban, is rolling out its own age-verification system that works like a passkey to access online services. If it proves to be effective, it could become the gold standard globally and serve as a more robust system to enforce age restrictions online.—LA
