Canada moves to ban social media for under-16s with an exemption route for platforms

Canada has joined the accelerating global drive to shield children from online harm, with the minority Liberal government tabling a bill that would prohibit anyone under 16 from holding a social-media account — unless the tech companies demonstrate they can provide a demonstrably safe environment. The measure, introduced by Culture Minister Marc Miller, mirrors legislation adopted in Australia late last year but includes a crucial carve-out: platforms that satisfy a new digital safety regulator may be granted exemptions, effectively turning a blanket ban into a negotiated compliance regime. “We are failing our children. Enough is enough,” Miller told the House of Commons, framing the Digital Safety Act as a necessary backstop against content that fuels anxiety, depression, and self-harm.

The proposal does not stop at social media. It also seeks to tame AI chatbots, requiring services such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini to limit the production of harmful material. A new Canadian Digital Safety Commission would be empowered to set binding standards and levy fines of up to three per cent of global annual revenue or 10 million Canadian dollars, whichever is greater. Crucially, the cabinet — not an independent regulator — would decide which platforms are covered by the ban, while the platforms themselves would be responsible for implementing age-verification mechanisms, a design choice that critics in Halifax and Ottawa already warn could prove porous in practice.

Viewed from the wider world, Ottawa’s move is the latest stitch in a patchwork of national restrictions that now stretches from Australia and Indonesia to Brazil, France, Malaysia, and the United Kingdom. Scandinavian countries are also inching closer; Sweden last autumn appointed an inquiry into age limits on social media, and the Canadian bill arrives just ahead of a G7 summit in France, where leaders are expected to coordinate their stance on digital harms. In Washington, the regulatory impulse has taken a different form: legislation targeting pornography websites with mandatory age verification, as proposed by Republican Senator Jim Banks this week, underscores a broader transatlantic appetite for forcing platforms to check how old their users really are.

Yet the Canadian debate carries a distinct domestic edge. Conservative-leaning commentators have seized on what they depict as an ironic double standard: under existing law, minors can still access government-sanctioned drug-consumption sites, while the same teenagers would be barred from social media under the bill. Free-speech advocacy groups, quoted in British reports, caution that the law’s sweeping content-curtailment powers could expand censorship. In Halifax, researchers from Dalhousie University have published a report urging policymakers to weigh the trade-offs carefully, warning that restrictions on access may sacrifice legitimate interests in expression, privacy, and child development. From Quebec, editorial voices argue that Ottawa is treating social media and artificial intelligence as separate dossiers, when in reality the two are merging into a single digital environment that requires a more integrated regulatory philosophy.

Whether the legislation survives Canada’s fragile parliamentary arithmetic is uncertain, but its flexible architecture — the exemption pathway — may prove an exportable model for governments wary of outright bans. If the commission can define robust safety standards without choking off innovation, the approach could steer a middle course between Australian-style prohibition and laissez-faire. For now, the bill places Canada squarely inside a global experiment that is redrawing the boundaries between childhood, autonomy, and the profit motives of the world’s most powerful technology firms.