The Canadian government has unveiled a new digital safety bill that bans children under 16 from using social media, with limited exceptions for platforms that meet certain safety standards. The move comes months after Australia enacted the world's first social media ban for minors.
Introduced Wednesday (April 30), the bill also aims to bolster safety for artificial intelligence chatbots by creating a digital regulatory agency to set safety standards, a government official said.
The bill's introduction to Parliament comes weeks after families affected by one of Canada's worst mass shootings sued OpenAI, alleging the company knew the perpetrator had planned the attack on ChatGPT but did not alert police.
In December 2025, Australia became the first country to ban social media for children under 16. One month after the law took effect, social media companies disabled nearly 5 million accounts belonging to teenagers.
France, Denmark and Poland are also considering tightening regulations on children's social media use, while Greece announced in April it would ban access for users under 15 starting January 2027.
Canadian government officials said in a technical briefing that the bill could take a year to pass and 18 months to establish the digital regulator after enactment.
Prime Minister Mark Carney currently holds a slim majority in Parliament, which is about to recess for the summer.
In its proposal for Bill C-34, the government said that beyond individual behavior, online harm "is also shaped by how digital services are designed and operated. Features such as algorithmic recommendation systems, engagement-based feeds, autoplay, and infinite scroll can amplify harmful content and increase exposure, particularly for younger users."
AI has created new challenges, and "voluntary actions by digital services have not kept pace with the scale, speed, and severity of online harm," the government said.
In this context, the bill seeks to establish new safety requirements for social media and AI chatbot services, requiring them to identify risks of harm on their platforms, implement measures to address certain risks, adopt safe and age-appropriate design features, publish usage guidelines, provide tools such as blocking and reporting, and submit publicly accessible digital safety plans.
The bill also requires platforms to remove content involving "child sexual abuse" or non-consensual sharing of intimate images within 24 hours of being reported, according to local media reports.
