In December, Australia banned social media for children under the age of 16.Hollie Adams/Reuters

Helen A. Hayes is the associate director of policy at the Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy. Taylor Owen is the Beaverbrook Chair in Media, Ethics, and Communication at McGill University and the founding director of the Centre for Media, Technology, and Democracy.

Australia’s bold social media ban for children under 16, and calls for Canada to follow its lead, reflect genuine concern about child safety online. But if policy makers are going to take the dramatic step of restricting access for an entire generation, they should proceed carefully – by framing any restrictions as a temporary moratorium that pressures platforms to make structural changes, not as an end in itself.

A moratorium serves as a stopgap, not a solution. The real solution, the one arrived at by every jurisdiction that has studied this problem, is a regulator with the authority to hold platforms accountable through risk assessments, transparency requirements, and age-appropriate design standards. Australia was able to enact an age restriction because it already had a system and decade of experience with an eSafety commissioner. Canada has no such infrastructure. A stand-alone ban here would punish users rather than the products causing harm, and would ensure that the moment a child ages out, they enter a digital environment with no protections........

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