A couple of weeks ago, the Carney government officially made good on its word and tabled a bill aimed at regulating social media companies. Bill C-34, or the Safe Social Media Act, is a follow-up to the Online Harms Act, (which ultimately died on the order paper), and thankfully, the best parts of the Trudeau-era bill survived to see the light of day. The core duty to act responsibly remains intact, which would require the platforms to assess the design risks of their platform and take active steps to mitigate them. Also still intact is the added duty imposed on platforms to protect children from products that we know will be accessed by children.

The Carney government was also smart to learn the lesson that the Trudeau government learned a touch too late to make a difference, which was to eschew a lot of the baggage that bogged down the Online Harms Act, namely the provisions related to the Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code. Additionally, the Safe Social Media Act has a notable improvement from the last bill: adding in consumer-facing AI chatbots, which face an added layer of obligations.

However, unlike the Trudeau-era bill, the Safe Social Media Act proposes a social media ban for kids and teens under 16. While it is certainly understandable why a government would want to go down the route of banning social media for kids, the Carney approach is misguided.

First, let’s state the obvious, the reason why our government is........

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