Canada looks set to be the latest country to join the worldwide trend of banning social media for children under 16, with a bill headed to the House of Commons in the coming days.
Early indications are that Canada’s rules will be somewhat less strict than trend leader Australia’s, with more exceptions for social media platforms that can demonstrate they are safe for children.
An unnamed government official told the National Post on Monday that Canada’s bill, due to be introduced on Wednesday, will “include provisions that allow platforms to seek exemptions should they demonstrate an ability to keep the youngest Canadians safe while using their products online.”
“The legislation is not expected to include the same type of ban for AI chatbots, but will establish a set of responsibilities platforms need to meet,” the National Post added.
The bill will also reportedly lay the groundwork for creating a new regulatory agency to enforce the under-16 ban and “target different types of harmful content online.”
The Toronto Star on Tuesday asked Culture Minister Marc Miller to comment on the proposed legislation, but he would say only that tighter regulations for online content were “very seriously” under consideration.
“It’s clear that a ban or a moratorium on social media by kids, who we do need to protect. It can be an important element, but it can’t be the only one,” he said.
Miller noted that bans on social media for children “seem to be popular,” but the evidence from world leader Australia’s first year of banning was mixed, as many children have found ways around the age verification systems. Miller estimated the bans were “perhaps 50 percent or more effective.”
Western University professor Kaitlynn Mendes made a similar observation to the National Post, suggesting a better approach might be to incentivize social media platforms to “change their design,” instead of delegating government officials to “regulate and monitor young people, and try to chase them off these platforms, which we know doesn’t work.”
Mendes advised “compelling companies to be more transparent” and focusing on specific features that can expose children to harmful content or negatively impact their behavior, such as auto-play videos.
The last major effort by Canada to regulate social media for children came in early 2025 under the administration of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The bill did not completely ban social media for children, but instead required platforms to devise safety plans for shielding young people from harmful content and submit regular progress reports to the government. The bill did not make it out of Parliament in 2025.
Two major developments since the demise of the earlier bill have been Australia beginning enforcement of its social media ban in December 2025, with a string of other countries announcing similar regulations throughout 2026, and growing concern about online content after the ChatGPT chatbot was implicated in the mass shooting conducted by 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar in British Columbia in February.
Family members of Van Rootselaar’s eight victims accused OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman, of failing to provide ChatGPT with adequate safeguards against holding dangerous conversations with disturbed individuals. ChatGPT’s internal safety team actually did notice that Van Rootselaar was obsessed with violence and murder during his exchanges with the chatbot, so they shuttered his account, but he simply created another one and resumed using ChatGPT to plan his mass-casualty attack.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said last week that his province would act to ban social media and chatbots for young people because “these are highly addictive tools that are monetizing the attention of our children and causing mental health harms in the process.”
Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra also floated the idea of a provincial ban on social media and cellphones in schools in April.
“I think the evidence is becoming more and more clear that cellphone use in our schools, elementary and our secondary schools, anywhere on site, has become a problem,” he said.
Canada’s governing Liberal Party passed a non-binding resolution in April calling for a nationwide ban on social media for children under 16. Some young people attending the party convention expressed frustration that they were not given a chance to register their objections to a ban, including concerns about violations of their privacy and the risk of data breaches.
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