Canada officially proposes youth social media ban, AI chatbot regulation

It’s official: the Government of Canada is moving to ban social media for youth.

Under the Safe Social Media Act that was tabled on Wednesday, social media companies like Meta and X (Twitter), livestreaming services and adult content services would be required to prevent Canadians under 16 from creating accounts on their platforms.

However, the government says social media platforms and livestreaming services — but not adult content services — could be exempted if they implement “sufficient safeguards.” There was no confirmation on what, exactly, those would entail, with the government saying this would be determined in the future through a regulation process.

AI chatbots would also need to have measures in place to respond when a user is expressing ideas related to harming others or themselves. This comes after widespread criticism of OpenAI for flagging but not reporting the account of the perpetrator of the February mass shooting in Tumbler Ridge, B.C. The AI company subsequently apologized and promised to implement stricter moderation and reporting measures.

“While laws exist to respond once harm has happened, there is currently very little that requires online services to prevent harm in the first place. The Safe Social Media Act aims to change that by ensuring that social media services and artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots are responsible for addressing harm before it occurs,” says the government.

It should be stressed, however, that this youth social media ban and AI chatbot regulations are only proposed as part of the Safe Social Media Act. It remains to be seen if and when it will become law, although the government notes that this process could take as long as 18 months.

In any event, this is a major development after months of discussions about whether Canada would move to implement such a ban. In April, Manitoba became the first province in Canada to announce a youth social media ban, while Ontario has expressed a desire to crack down on tech use in schools.

Meanwhile, Australia in December became the first country to enact a ban, while Malaysia rolled out its own ban last week. Throughout all of this, governments in the likes of the UK, South Korea and Spain have been looking into similar legislation. All of this comes amid concerns about the well-documented negative impacts on the mental health and wellbeing of youth social media users.

With all of that said, addressing these issues with a social media ban, specifically, have proven somewhat controversial and spotty so far. In Australia, we’ve seen reports of kids easily circumventing age verification features, while research has found that it’s preventing youth from seeing the news. There are also longstanding concerns regarding providing biometric data for age verification, especially considering tech companies already have so much of consumers’ personal information.

Further, some experts have expressed scepticism that a ban would work in Canada, particularly Michael Geist, University of Ottawa law professor and one of the country’s leading voices in law, technology and society. While acknowledging that social media is a “serious issue” for kids, Geist has argued that an outright youth ban could cause a variety of problems, including failing to meaningfully hold tech companies accountable and potentially even violating Canadians’ rights and privacy.

Source: Government of Canada