Ottawa moves to ban kids under 16 from social media

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OTTAWA — The Liberal government’s new online safety legislation would force social media to block access for kids under 16, though platforms will be able to obtain an exemption if they put sufficient safeguards in place.

Bill C-34, introduced Wednesday in the House of Commons, would also regulate the companies behind AI chatbots by imposing on them a duty to act responsibly. That includes measures to lower the risk of chatbots communicating harmful content and putting in place crisis intervention protocols for cases involving self-harm, suicide or violence.

“The measures in this bill represent, in my view, the basic expectation that parents and Canadians (have) for keeping their kids safe online. I believe all parties should agree on the importance of these minimum safeguards,” Culture Minister Marc Miller said.

He made the comments at a press conference in Ottawa, alongside a Toronto pediatrician and a representative for the Canadian Centre for Child Protection. Child advocates and medical professionals praised the bill Wednesday evening, while large tech companies said they were assessing the legislation.

The bill doesn’t prescribe a specific method to verify age. In response to a question about what methods the government is looking at, Miller said there will “be a back and forth with platforms as to what protects people’s privacy and what is adequate and sufficient in the circumstances.”

Miller acknowledged there are people who want the government to implement a full social media ban for kids, and that “there is a part of my brain that agrees with it.”

But he said there are ways social media platforms and chatbots can be made safe.

He told reporters the government decided not to block kids from using chatbots because chatbots are different from social media.

“They play a function and a role that can be very damaging towards kids, but can also play an important function in the educational system and in the AI strategy that we are putting forward,” Miller said. He added that “we are going to have keep a close eye on it.”

The bill will include adult content services that focus on user-shared content. The government did not give examples or specify whether they will cover sites such as OnlyFans and Pornhub.

Platforms that offer adult content would not be able to obtain an exemption from age restriction.

Background materials provided by the government said the bill will cover traditional social media services like Facebook and X. It will also apply to “public-facing conversational chatbots that can mimic human-like relationships.”

The head of the Canadian Medical Association, Dr. Bolu Ogunyemi, praised the legislation Wednesday, saying it makes Canada a global leader.

“It’s unacceptable for foreign-owned platforms to continue to get rich at the expense of our children’s mental health, privacy and personal safety,” Ogunyemi said.

Dr. Charlotte Moore Hepburn, medical head of Child Health Policy Accelerator at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, said doctors like her have been seeing an alarming increase in anxiety, depression, self-harm and disordered eating among young people.

“These harms are not only driven by the content that children and youth encounter online, they are also linked to the very design of these digital platforms that captivate and profit from their attention,” she said at the press conference.

Meta and Google said Wednesday evening they were assessing the legislation.

“Online safety is a shared responsibility and we’ve invested heavily in industry-leading protections that help keep Canadians safe when using our products and services,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Meta said social media bans are “counterproductive, but we are encouraged that the government appears to recognize that online services that provide teens with sufficient safeguards, like we’ve done with Teen Accounts and for teens’ conversations with AIs, provide real value to young people.”

The legislation would create a new regulator, the Digital Safety Commission of Canada. The government said in briefing materials it would be an independent body whose members would be appointed by cabinet.

The bill covers seven types of harmful content, including content that induces a child to harm themselves, content that incites violence and foments hatred and non-consensual intimate content.

Social media platforms will have to remove two types of content within 24 hours -- content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor and non-consensual intimate images.

Platforms will also have to “apply labels to synthetically generated content,” the government said in a press release.

The government did not give a specific timeline for when the new rules will be implemented.

Once the bill passes, cabinet will issue a directive designating which platforms the bill applies to, officials said. That could take six to eight months, while the regulator is expected to be set up in about 18 months, officials said.

That means the age ban could take effect before there is a mechanism in place for companies to obtain an exemption. A spokesperson for Miller said the goal is to have age restrictions in place when the law comes into force.

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist said in a post on X that many aspects of the bill are uncertain, and much of the work is being left to cabinet and the future regulator.

“Teenagers today concerned about losing access to social media don’t have too much to worry about. This will take years to implement,” Geist said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 10, 2026.