Social media ban for children would be
‘double-edged sword,’ Iqaluit activist says
Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller expected to introduce new bill to block people under 16 from accessing Facebook, TikTok, X, other platforms
Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller is expected to introduce a digital security bill to Parliament on Wednesday, according to reports from the Globe and Mail. The bill would ban children under age 16 from accessing social media platforms, such as Facebook. (Photo by Daron Letts)
A ban on social media for youth under 16 would be a “double-edged sword,” said Iqaluit activist Delaney Drachenberg.
The federal government is going to introduce a bill Wednesday to ban children from accessing social media platforms, the Globe and Mail reported Tuesday, citing an anonymous source it said was familiar with the plan.
“I do believe there needs to be more done to ensure the safety of youth when interacting with online platforms,” Drachenberg said in an interview Tuesday, adding that a ban might, however, result in an increase in suicide in the Arctic due to a lack of support networks.
“We’re going to see youth become more isolated in rural communities because social media is such a key part of how youth in rural communities, especially in Nunavut, get to interact with the world,” Drachenberg said.
“If they’re banned from social media, they would be completely banned from online support circles, especially when we think of youth whose parents may not be accepting,” Drachenberg said. “This is just going to isolate them further from their communities.”
Fenwick McKelvey, a communications professor at Montreal’s Concordia University, said in a phone interview that it’s a “wake-up call and a reminder for governments and community sectors to think about core questions of digital infrastructure.”
The bill, to be introduced by Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller, would establish a federal regulator to set safety standards that social-media platforms must follow, the Globe reported.
The bill will include mechanisms to address harms caused by artificial-intelligence chatbots, the newspaper added.
The bill follows Ottawa’s other failed attempts to regulate social media providers in 2021 and 2024.
The bill is also expected to require transparency from artificial-intelligence companies, requiring them to notify police when a user has indicated they intend to harm themselves or someone else.
“This creates an opportunity to create safer spaces for youth to hang out and connect,” McKelvey said.
The bill could serve to correct the behaviour of such U.S.-based social media providers as Facebook, Reddit, and X that are not acting in good faith, said Michael Cooper, vice-president of data and partnerships with Mental Health Research Canada, a think tank that conducts mental health research.
“Social media companies are operating in a way that’s similar to how we saw tobacco companies operating previously, where they are pressuring governments, and they are providing selective facts,” Cooper said during a phone interview Tuesday.
Cooper participated in hearings when the House of Commons Canadian Heritage committee looked at the effects of influencers and social media content on children and adolescents.
By bringing the tech giants to the table, the bill could pressure the companies to change their behaviour if they want to maintain their market share, he said.
Really, does anyone even think that this would be enforced or followed?
Maybe about the same as public drinking, truancy, or seat belts, but good luck with that.
The draconian cartoon world Canada has become.
It’ll be no surprise when a Nunavut politician starts a parliament motion or senate amendment.
To jail all kids 16 years and under for their speech on the internet.
When tgere is no internet , there must be so.ething ekse to do other than wait forit to go back on , especially in rural Canada , up here on top Canada we have lots of room on our lands to do what we like . When the sun is up 20 plus hours a day …who needs internet.
Not sure how this would be enforced but this is a good thing. Socialization is the real social media. Get off your phones and be kids. And to say a social media ban would cause suicides is absurd. Tons of suicides are directly linked to social media use.
Growing up in the Arctic, we didn’t have social media. We spent our time outside, with friends, family, and our communities. We certainly had challenges, but not at the level we see today. Social media can connect people, but it can also isolate them from the real world, expose them to bullying, and create pressures that previous generations never faced. The conversation shouldn’t only be about what youth might lose if access is restricted — it should also be about what we’ve lost since social media became such a large part of daily life.
The biggest issue with it wouldn’t be the isolation of social media, it would be how they would implement a ban like this
These social media companies have no way to verify if accounts and profiles they advertise to are human or AI anymore so they need a way to verify they are 1 human and 2 legally allowed to advertise to them.
This would require verification of age through use of an ID which would attach an account to a person online so that any kind of dissent or political agitation be tied exactly person to person which would lead to so many other issues.
Age bans and verification is only there to line more pockets and people need to know
Social media’s cons vastly outweigh its pros in my opinion. While people are able to connect better than before and have access to more information the information often presented on social media is typically highly short snippets of unvetted misinformation. While traditional news also has its bias, you still have the experience of actually reading an article, or watching a segment, rather than mindlessly scrolling to the next after 12 total words. ‘
As for connection, well its a little too easy. Look at the rampant toxicity, use of social media to stir up emotions, our own news pages on FB in each community are loaded with toxicity that frankly didn’t exist prior to social media. These are things children don’t need exposure to.
Then we move on to the real trouble. Short form intake. Kids attention spans are gone. They cant sit and read, they cant sit and accomplish a task you ask them to in the classroom because you are competing with digital short form media that is designed in a way that its endless-scroll apps, that triggers significant dopamine releases in the brain’s mesolimbic reward pathway. Its essentially become as addictive as drugs that so similar.
The result in a zombie like state with minimal learning and addition to screen-time to get that constant mesolimbic reward. Teachers cant compete with that. Parents are struggling to compete with it. Designers know though that make money off these apps or games exactly how to target the brain. Big money goes into studying that to hook people.
Gen Z and Alpha are the first real generations to grow up in a totally digital age and its looking like there’s some long lasting issues that comes with that. And still you have parents shoving a cellphone and Ipad Infront of their face and then expect them to respond in a classroom. Parents are sabotaging their own kids at this point. Literacy is dropping like a rock, not just in the North and yet parents are still happy to let the digital world parent and raise their kid.
A social media ban will not change what parents are doing , and there will be work arounds. The real change is parenting though, stop sticking cellphones in kids faces, they are months old, or years old and parents constantly have a cellphone 2 feet from their face capturing everything and then spending their own time on it. What will your kids have learned once they grow.
Its going to be an uphill battle. Parents need to come out of their digital zombie like state before any progress will be made though.
It will be quite easy to control access to the internet. Simply using the same old masses are unaware cover story… it’s for the protection and safety of kids. Thus, in a snap, to get everyone cheering for the bill to pass to save the kids.
Not realizing adults will also be required to go through the identity check point system themselves before any access to the internet will be granted.
But it won’t be one open gate once through the verification process.
Drip by drip, each place one wishes to access will drop in with its own gated checkpoint… social media. video search, video sharing, messaging, payments, banking, public services, porn, and so forth. That is if you want to be part of society… or be shunned to the land unable to buy bullets, food, or access your bank account.
As months go by, it’ll become routine, the new normal, and constantly reminded it’s “keeping children safe” in this “dangerous-world”.
Also, so adults don’t access misinformation, even though the government decides what is.
To make this happen, a digital ID will be required if you want to participate in society. Of course Nunavut has a willing digital ID premier, so what better place to roll it out to have every last drop of your data in a Nation building data center.
Now with Digital ID prison in place it’ll be easy to disallow bingo for a month because you purchased beer or posted a negative comment about digital ID. Government’s total control because everything will be known what you say, buy and do… online and offline.
Thank you, Mass Formation.
Completely agree with you, and with facial recognition software and other tools of surveillance, there won’t be much privacy anymore. The sad part is how we willingly gave up our freedoms under the premise of “child safety”, when this is absolutely going to lead to a lot more than that. One of the pillars of Western civilization is freedom of speech. We will certainly evolve into something else.
Because that’s what we need more than anything Canada. An “Identity Minister” LOL. Silly Liberals at it again.