How Age-Restricting Social Media May Play Out

Unless social media and AI chatbot companies clean up their act, proposed federal legislation will see Canada join countries like Australia in banning youth under 16 from creating an account on their platform.

Introduced by the federal government on June 10, Bill C-34, or the Safe Social Media Act, would prevent people under 16 years old from creating or having accounts on some of the most popular social media platforms.

However, companies can be exempted from the restrictions if they take steps to limit access to seven types of harmful content listed in the bill:

• terrorism or violent extremism content;
• content that foments hate;
• content used to bully a child;
• content that “sexually victimizes” a child or revictimizes a survivor;
• content that causes children to hurt themselves;
• intimate images shared without consent; and
• content that incites violence.

Recent research has highlighted the potential harms of unregulated social media and AI chatbot access for children and youth, including significant mental health impacts for girls, in particular.

Whistleblowers and now a court case have revealed the design of social media apps is intentionally addictive. Features like infinite scroll, video autoplay and continual refresh of chat feeds are used to keep users on their platforms.

As well, AI chatbots have been linked to several deaths by suicide, murder and incidents of self-harm and have contributed to delusional episodes for both adults and youth.

Grok, the AI chatbot exclusively for X users, made headlines earlier this year for creating millions of sexualized and nearly naked images of both real and imaginary women and children.

The day after Bill C-34 was announced, Canada’s privacy commissioner, Philippe Dufresne, announced his investigation into Grok has concluded that generating the fake images violates federal privacy laws.

“What we’re seeing rolling out around the world in terms of bans is an increased appetite for safer, healthier places for young people to be online,” said Kara Brisson-Boivin, director of research for digital media literacy organization MediaSmarts.

At the same time, she added, “the ban itself doesn’t really do anything itself to change the environment of the online spaces that young people are engaging in.”

The government’s explanation for why Bill C-34 is necessary includes reports that a quarter of kids aged 12 to 17 have experienced cyberbullying at least once. It also states that youth who have been victimized online are more likely to report mental health issues and suicidal ideation. And it alleges that online child sexual exploitation and abuse reports to police have increased in recent years.

Bill C-34 would create a new federal Digital Safety Commission of Canada, which would enforce the ban, monitor and investigate companies’ compliance, and receive and assess complaints from the public.

Next week is the last of the House of Commons’ current session before breaking for the summer. It is unlikely Bill C-34 will be voted on before the House reconvenes in mid-September.

The bill is vague, and there are many outstanding questions about how such a ban would be enforced and whether it will have the intended impact of protecting kids and youth — especially when reports from Australia, which implemented similar legislation in 2025, show that most young people know how to get around the country’s age restrictions.

“It’s never going to be perfect, a ban. Kids are going to get around it, and kids are still vulnerable when they’re 16. So when they do access these spaces, they need to access safe ones,” said Emily Laidlaw, the Canada Research Chair in cybersecurity law and an associate professor of law at the University of Calgary.

Canada has picked a “middle-of-the-road approach,” she said, compared with other countries that ban social media access outright for youth under 16.

Instead Canada’s age restriction acts more like a social media pause, while companies work to remove harmful or potentially harmful content and design from children’s view.

The Tyee interviewed Laidlaw and Brisson-Boivin to answer some of our most pressing questions about the proposed age restrictions.

How did we get here?

This is not Canada’s first attempt at passing an online safety bill. Bill C-63 or the Online Harms Act, which did not include age restrictions on social media or AI chatbot accounts, died when Parliament was prorogued for the spring 2025 election.

But social media bans weren’t “on the radar,” Laidlaw told The Tyee, until Australia’s legislation banning youth under 16 from having social media accounts came into effect in December.

The United Kingdom has also introduced similar legislation. Its law names some of the specific platforms it will target and is set to come into effect next spring.

“It seems like such a clean solution to a complex problem,” Laidlaw said, adding that the bans in the United Kingdom and Australia are “blunt” instruments in that they are outright bans on children’s accounts on the platform, unlike Canada’s proposed pause on kids’ accounts until platforms improve.

As well, the United Kingdom is planning to implement social media feature restrictions for 16- and 17-year-olds.

This isn’t the first time the idea of banning children and younger teenagers from certain areas of the internet has been raised.

The rise in popularity of the internet and its use both at home and in schools in the mid-1990s led to calls to ban online pornography in the United States to protect children, which ultimately did not pan out. However, more recently the United Kingdom and several U.S. states have moved to further restrict access to online pornography.

“The challenge is that it’s hard to compare to some of the early solutions and the pushback, because the internet was so different” 30 years ago compared with today, Laidlaw said.

“The addictive design challenges we’re seeing, the extraordinary power of these companies, it’s unprecedented. Policymakers are right to look at different types of solutions. I just think the answer is there’s no easy solution here.”

How will it work?

Most social media platforms already limit account creation to people aged 13 and older. But up to now there’s been no outside enforcement of these rules, and young people report no issue gaining access to platforms, regardless of their age.

Under the proposed Canadian law, social media and AI chatbot companies would be subjected to a duty to act responsibly, a duty to protect children, a duty to make certain content inaccessible and a duty to be transparent.

Those duties are “the gold standard,” said Laidlaw. “In particular because it’s focused on companies putting in place risk mitigation measures. It’s about consumer protection more than anything. It’s the only way to really address improving child safety online.”

Bill C-34 is short on details regarding which social media platforms and AI chatbots will be included, how social media account access will be age restricted, the specifics of what is harmful content, and how the age restrictions would be enforced.

That’s because the yet-to-be-established Digital Safety Commission is expected to introduce these regulations and assess their criteria, Laidlaw said.

“We can expect that it will be different for each platform,” she said. “But some of it would be things like curated algorithms for children that do not push harmful content, like promoting eating disorders and self-harm.”

Other potential regulations include a restriction on infinite scrolling, the ability of users to continually refresh their social media feeds for new content without limit, Laidlaw said.

It could also include improved user complaint mechanisms for identifying and removing harmful content, she added. Or a ban on platform use during hours that children — and even adults — would otherwise be asleep.

“Some of the platforms may be disabling livestreaming or access to certain chat features that might make children more vulnerable,” Laidlaw said. “Design-based decisions that minimize their exposure to certain types of harmful content, that also minimize the addictive nature of these platforms.”

The bill’s requirement that companies act responsibly and transparently and protect children will push social media and AI chatbot companies to examine the design of their online spaces, how their algorithms operate and how they handle reports of harm and other user complaints, Laidlaw said.

“Up front, the companies need to look at how they design their entire space for child protection,” she said. “They also need to be transparent about these practices.”

The Digital Safety Commission of Canada will have the power to investigate companies that do not comply with the age restriction law, hold hearings and impose fines of up to $20 million or five per cent of gross global revenue, whichever is higher.

“What we want to see are platforms held accountable for prioritizing children’s well-being and safety, and that includes the design choices that companies are making,” said MediaSmarts’ Brisson-Boivin.

“Right now, companies are following corporate motivations, and I think there’s an opportunity to shift that focus more towards well-being, safety and children’s rights, by design.”

The method of determining whether a social media account holder is under 16 is not prescribed in the legislation, though the proposed law does say the commission must be satisfied that the measures ensure users’ private data is protected until age is verified, and is then destroyed.

Laidlaw doesn’t think the companies will go the route of asking users for government identification and wouldn’t recommend that method for privacy reasons.

But she said it could include biometrics like facial recognition technology, estimating age based on the content a user interacts with most or even checking when the account was created.

And all users, not just those suspected of being under 16, can be subjected to age verification measures, Brisson-Boivin added.

But while young people will be banned from having social media accounts, there is nothing to stop anyone without an account from accessing content on platforms such as YouTube or TikTok, for example.

Other sites, such as X, require users to have accounts to view much of their content. X has also restricted use of Grok, its AI chatbot, to X account holders.

Bill C-34 is “not quite as extreme as it seems,” Laidlaw said, adding that the Canadian age restriction as the bill is currently written applies only to large social media platforms, or platforms that demonstrate a significant risk of harm to kids and youth.

“It’s not going to be all social media.... That could create an incentive for kids to move to other platforms that are potentially more dangerous,” she said.

MediaSmarts’ Brisson-Boivin said that’s already happening in Australia.

“Most importantly it runs the risk of having unintended backfire effects: young people engaging in closeted social media use, and not turning to the adults in their lives for supports, for fear of punishment,” she said.

For kids made more vulnerable by our society, such as those who are LGBTQ2S+, cutting off access to social media could cut off their only access to supportive community and services, Brisson-Boivin added.

“There are going to be adverse effects,” she said.

That being said, the age restrictions could also lead to a cultural change in Canada where social media accounts for kids under 16 are no longer viewed as acceptable, Brisson-Boivin added.

How effective will it be?

The Australian government has begun investigating social media companies to find out why their ban isn’t working, Laidlaw said.

“Is it because the companies aren’t complying to the threshold that they should? Or is it not working because it’s never going to work the way that we hope?” she asked.

“The goal is never perfection; it’s always to make things better in this kind of space. So we have to ask, Is it making things better? We also don’t quite know that yet.”

Removing kids from social media platforms will reduce the risk of their exploitation or harm through social media, Laidlaw said.

But, unlike the United Kingdom’s legislation, Bill C-34 does not currently include online gaming platforms or private messaging services, such as Roblox or Telegram, where children are also potentially at risk of harm from predatory adults.

The bill is structured in such a way that it can expand to gaming and messaging services in the future, Laidlaw added.

But, she said, adding age restrictions to online gaming could loop in games that don’t put kids at risk of exploitation, bullying or harassment.

Private messaging restriction comes with its own complexities, too.

“You can’t create a law that requires that companies undermine encryption in order to moderate for harmful content,” Laidlaw said.

An alternative she suggested is improving user complaint avenues for reporting harmful content or behaviour to the company. Or telling a user when a friend request is coming from another country, warning that they may be a stranger.

Unlike similar legislation in the United Kingdom and Australia, Bill C-34 does not tackle digital media literacy education, which MediaSmarts argues is essential for everyone using social media.

“We have been advocating for decades now for a national strategy for digital media literacy education,” said Brisson-Boivin.

Canada has a long history of digital policy-making, she added, mainly devoted to improving and expanding telecommunications infrastructure.

“What’s been missing from these discussions is the critical approach. Thinking about education, ensuring all people using technology, the internet, from very young children to older adults, have the critical supports that they need,” said Brisson-Boivin, adding that the concept of media literacy was founded in Canada.

“We can’t teach digital media literacy once in Grade 10 and then consider the job done. Technology moves too fast. The online environment and the challenges we all face move too fast.”

Should Bill C-34 become law, it must be reviewed again in three years. And every five years thereafter.

If more countries decide to pursue a similar ban or pause on children’s access to social media, it could have the intended effect of forcing social media giants such as Meta and TikTok to implement changes to reduce risk of harm, Laidlaw added.

“If enough countries all implement the same solution, it will, in the end, impact the bottom line of the company,” she said.

“And if they want access to the market that is children, if they see that it’s a market they want to continue to serve, then they’re going to have to change their business model.”

In the meantime, Laidlaw doesn’t anticipate social media companies will strike back at the legislation like Meta did when Canada began charging tech companies for hosting Canadian news articles.

But it could be an issue for our relationship with the U.S. government, which included a prohibition on the regulation and content moderation of U.S. technology companies in the current version of the Canada-United States-Mexico Agreement on trade.

“I think they’ll be resistant,” Laidlaw said.