The social media ban for children under 16 that’s part of the federal government’s new online harms bill will likely narrow over time, experts note, with exemptions available for companies that meet yet-to-be-defined safeguards.
Government officials are aiming to use the ban as a “carrot and stick” incentive for platforms to improve their designs and better protect children long-term, if and when those kids return.
In practice, the strategy takes a less hardline approach than Australia, the first country to ban social media for youth under 16 and whose law contains no possibility for exemptions.
“They’ve kind of straddled these two worlds,” Christopher Dietzel, a postdoctoral fellow in sociology at Western University and communications studies affiliate associate professor at Concordia University, said in an interview about the Canadian bill.
“I actually think (this bill is) better than what has been posed in Australia because it does acknowledge that, while these services currently facilitate harm, if the services demonstrate that they have reached the threshold where they are safe by design, then there would be exemptions.”
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Those exemptions would be doled out by a future digital safety commission, which Culture Minister Marc Miller said will be up and running 18 months after the legislation is passed into law.
The “adequate safeguards” themselves will need to be set by the Privy Council, which includes cabinet members and other officials. The commission would then use those regulations to determine whether a company qualifies for an exemption.
That timeline, government officials said Wednesday during a technical briefing on the bill, means “there will be a period of time where none of the designated social media services should be available to children under the age of 16.”
“It’s going to take time before the first exemption can be granted,” officials said.
4:51
Ottawa unveils plan to ban social media for youth under 16 — but not AI chatbots
Heidi Tworek, a history and public policy professor at the University of British Columbia who sat on the expert advisory group that was consulted for the bill, told Global News the bill recognizes a ban is not the only solution to protecting kids from online harms.
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That perspective has been shared by youth mental health experts and organizations who have advocated for stronger online safety measures.
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“You can think about it as carrot as well as stick in here for the platforms to actually improve their services in a really fundamental way,” Tworek said.
“It’s also recognizing that, depending on the child, there are some potential benefits for them in interacting on social media,” she added, including social and educational exposure.
Experts, however, say the key will be in setting an appropriate safeguard threshold for an exemption.
The legislation itself provides some hints on what the government wants to see, setting a “duty to protect children” for social media and artificial intelligence platforms requiring them to incorporate “age-appropriate designs” into their systems.
Those could include content warning labels, safe search settings for children, and measures to reduce addictive behaviours like endless scrolling, the government said Wednesday.
“This will be a question of really making sure you’ve got smart experts on board who very clearly define what those expectations are” for an exemption, Tworek said.
Social media companies like Meta and TikTok say they have already improved their measures protecting children on their platforms in recent years, rolling out features like child and teen accounts and parental controls.
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Instagram’s youth accounts for users under 16, for example, have default settings that block teens from being messaged by people they aren’t connected with, and minimize their exposure to sensitive content such as posts that depict violence or encourage cosmetic procedures.
TikTok limits who can follow users between the ages of 13 and 17 as well as who views their videos and reads their bios. The app’s teen accounts can’t host live content, send or receive virtual gifts, or buy or sell products on TikTok Shop, and have a default screen time limit of 60 minutes while disabling push notifications at night.
A TikTok spokesperson told Global News in an email that the company shares the Canadian government’s goal of safe online experiences for teens and expressed willingness to work on further improvements.
“Investing in the latest technologies to advance platform safety is a continuous priority for us, and we look forward to collaborating constructively with the government on this important issue,” the spokesperson said.
Until that exemption regime is in place, there is also uncertainty over how the age restrictions will be…
Read the full article at Global News →
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