There are about to be some extremely irritable Canadian teens. Spare a thought for their parents.
What happened: The federal government will ban social media for children under 16 as part of an online harms law that will be tabled in the House of Commons tomorrow, according to the Globe and Mail.
The bill will also regulate AI chatbots, including a mandate that companies report credible threats of violence to law enforcement. OpenAI is currently being sued for not reporting the violent ChatGPT conversations of the Tumbler Ridge shooter.
Yes, but: Ottawa’s proposed ban reportedly includes a carve-out for social media companies that can prove they’ve mitigated the risk their platform poses to kids. A new digital regulator will outline the safeguards platforms need to put in place to meet this criteria. In other words, the ban may not wind up actually being as comprehensive as it sounds.
Why it matters: Countless studies now show social media’s negative effects on children’s mental health and development, and three-quarters of Canadians support a social media ban for kids under 16. The real question is whether Ottawa, or any government, can make a ban work in practice. So far, the answer has been: not really.
Australia has struggled to enforce its own ban. According to a recent report, 70% of Australian kids who had a social media account pre-ban still have access to it. Some platforms have even coached kids on how to bypass the age-verification system.
Our take: Based on the carve-out for ‘non-harmful’ social media companies, this law may wind up being more of a pressure tactic to get platforms to step up their safety controls than a true, outright ban. It wouldn’t be all that surprising if the major social media platforms announce a few new guardrails and avoid ever actually having to boot under-16s.—LA
