Online child safety is a growing concern for governments globally, with Australia issuing the first blanket social media ban for children under age 16 last December.
More than 20 countries, including Canada, could soon follow suit with similar measures.
The Government of Canada introduced Bill C-34, The Safe Social Media Act, in June 2026. The act would ban children under 16 from using social media, introduce new safeguards for children using AI chatbots, require companies to remove harmful content and mitigate risks proactively, and create a new commission to enforce these rules. Private messaging apps, video games, and search engines would be excluded.
Amarnath Amarasingam, an online harms and extremism researcher at Queen’s who served on an advisory board for Bill C-34, spoke with The Journal about the legislation’s proposed changes and privacy concerns.
“The general trend was to ban social media for anyone under 16 until the social media companies can prove that these platforms are safe for younger users, and so that’s kind of the philosophy of the bill,” Amarasingam said.
However, the legislation will leave it up to the new Digital Safety Commission to decide how it’s implemented.
The social media ban has faced criticism from researchers, lawyers, and digital rights activists due to age verification requirements, warning of widespread surveillance and loss of freedom and autonomy.
The main challenge is implementation.
“If you want to prove that a particular user is under age 16, you basically have to also [have] anyone over 16 prove that they’re over 16, and so that means automatically that you’re verifying all of your users,” Amarasingam said.
“And how are you going to do that? Are you going to use facial recognition software? Are you going to comb through our friends lists and our locations to find out whether we’re in high school or elementary school?” he said.
Google announced it will use age assurance technology to identify underage users in Canada in a blog post on Monday. The company will use machine learning models to estimate a user’s age, including Google searches and YouTube watch history to automatically enable age-appropriate safeguards for those estimated to be under 18. Users can appeal the restrictions by uploading a piece of government ID or a selfie.
This comes at a time where social media companies are facing numerous lawsuits over child safety. The largest one yet was Meta’s $17-billion USD settlement in August, which requires the company to enhance its age estimation and implement measures, such as snoozing notifications during school hours by default and limiting screen time to two hours per day, which does not extend to other countries.
Social media companies are pushing to shift the burden of age verification to app stores, which is another possibility, he said.
An open letter signed by 438 security researchers and academics, including a Turing Award winner and the president of the International Association for Cryptologic Research, called for a global pause on age verification until it can be determined that the benefits outweigh the risks. The letter, published in March, described age verification as “a large-scale access control mechanism” that would require minors and adults alike to prove their age by uploading ID to perform basic actions online.
The researchers also warned that the infrastructure required to securely store such sensitive personal data at scale risks centralizing power into companies with the capacity to do so, and that governments may ban virtual private networks (VPN) to prevent children from circumventing the bans, which are used by individuals for protection from authoritarian regimes.
Three months into the ban, a study found more than 80 per cent of teens in Australia were still on social media. However, Amarasingam said this had more to do with social media companies resisting regulation and “kick[ing] the can down the road” than with the legislation itself. He added that the narrative that these bans “don’t work” serves those companies’ interests.
Amarasingam said another important takeaway from the Bill is the creation of a new commission “with some teeth” that enforces the legislation, ensuring social media companies make their products safe for young people. If passed, the commission will have power to fine a company the higher of $10 million or 3 per cent of global gross revenue for offenses.
Amarasingam, whose research focuses on online radicalization, was particularly concerned with the decision to exclude video games from the Bill.
“They didn’t include any gaming platforms in the legislation. They’ve left it up to the commission to decide how to include it,” he said.
“Most of the harms we’ve seen are on Roblox, Minecraft, Fortnite, and public chat linked video games, and we’ve seen a lot of grooming and extortion happen in these chats as a primary point of contact with young people,” he said. “I’ve seen the dark corners of the internet in terms of how this stuff plays out with communities and societies and young people.”
When it comes to privacy, Amarasingam said much is left to be decided.
“If there’s enough checks and balances built into the legislation and enough built into the commission itself, hopefully some of those will get ironed out along the way,” he said.
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child safety, digital privacy, instagram, Meta, Privacy, Social media, surveillance
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