We've all just watched Australia's much-hyped social media ban for under-16s play out in real time, and the results are as predictable as they are disastrous. The Guardian called it a "flop," and parents who hoped for a silver bullet are left with nothing but frustration. Sold as a way to protect kids' mental health and keep them safe online, the ban has simply driven teenagers to unregulated, riskier corners of the internet while doing nothing to address the root causes of harm.
Every parent worries about what their children are exposed to online, and that concern is legitimate. Cyberbullying, sextortion, predatory algorithms—these are real dangers. But before Canada repeats Australia's mistake, we need to look at the evidence, or lack thereof. Columbia University and a growing number of researchers have pointed out that the link between social media use and youth mental distress is correlational, not proven causation.
Jonathan Haidt's popular thesis has faced sharp methodological criticism for overstating the relationship and ignoring confounding factors. Blanket bans, however well-intentioned, are not grounded in a solid body of empirical research. We cannot legislate parental anxiety into public policy without doing real harm.
And that harm will land hardest on marginalized young people.
For many LGBTQ youth, particularly those in unsupportive homes or places where being out is simply unsafe, online spaces aren't a luxury—they're a lifeline. Social media can be the only place where a transgender teenager in an abusive house finds peer support, accurate sexual health information, or just the reassurance that there's nothing wrong with who they are. Cut them off from that, and you're not protecting them; you're isolating them at the most vulnerable moment of their lives.
A study done by Hopelabs and the Born This Way Foundation confirms that active, purposeful social media use enhances self-esteem and reduces isolation for these kids. An outright ban that criminalizes their access to identity-affirming communities would be a catastrophic blow to their mental health, not a safeguard.
If our goal is to protect children, we cannot write legislation that sacrifices queer and trans youth in the name of a cheap political win.
The enforcement side of a ban is just as troubling. Australia's experience shows that most teenagers simply bypass age limits with VPNs and false accounts, or shift their activity to entirely unmoderated spaces where the worst predators thrive. Meanwhile, any serious age-verification system demands invasive biometrics or government-linked digital IDs.
Handing that kind of sensitive data to private platforms and a government with a poor record on privacy is a non-starter. The Australian Human Rights Commission and the Council of Europe have both sounded the alarm on this point. We shouldn't have to surrender our civil liberties and build a surveillance state to keep kids safe. Technology already exists to estimate age based on user behaviour without breaching privacy, and that's the direction we ought to be heading.
There's also a troubling political calculus at play.
The Liberal government has a well-documented appetite for speech restrictions, as we saw with the debate surrounding the Online Harms Act, Bill C-63. Even Margaret Atwood warned it risked “thoughtcrime” enforcement. This security theatre hands the Carney Liberals—or any future government—a fresh pretext to expand censorship, undermine anonymous whistleblowing, and incrementally erode free expression. History teaches us that once governments invoke the protection of children to curtail speech, the restrictions rarely stop with minors.
So what should we do?
The answer is not to ban children, it's to regulate the platforms.
A legislative duty of care, applied to all online operators, would force them to design their products with children's safety in mind by default. That means tackling addictive algorithms, increasing algorithmic transparency, and creating meaningful accountability with real penalties. It means giving parents robust tools to manage and monitor their kids' online lives without treating a 16-year-old seeking queer peer support the same as a seven-year-old. And it means strengthening law enforcement's ability to go after actual criminals—extortionists, stalkers, and predators—without gutting the Charter rights of law-abiding citizens.
The Council of Europe's Commissioner for Human Rights put it bluntly: “Regulate online platforms, not children.” That's the path forward. Let's abandon the simplistic idea that we can ban our way to safety and instead build a framework that respects the evidence, protects privacy, and, crucially, doesn't leave our most vulnerable kids stranded in the dark.
The Liberal Party of Canada has always stood for rights, evidence, and the principle that the government should protect people from harm without infringing on fundamental freedoms. This file demands nothing less.
This piece was written by an individual contributor and reflects the editorial position of The Provincial Times. Read our Content Policy here.
