Halifax researchers weigh pros and cons of social media ban for youth

Weighing the pros and cons of a social media ban is something many Canadian youth, parents, and politicians have been doing lately.

The federal government is introducing legislation addressing social media and AI chatbot safety, particularly for Canadian youth. The legislation will include an age restriction preventing children under the age of 16 from having accounts on social media services.

Halifax researchers at Dalhousie University have been looking into the possible downsides of restricting access to youth.

“It’s also important to consider the trade-offs that exist, the sacrifices that are going to come to freedom of expression, to privacy, to child development and educational interests,” said Michael Karanicolas, the editor of a new report titled Think of the Children.

Specifically, the report looked into the ramifications of governments requiring tech companies to introduce digital age verification tools.

“There’s no way to design this without significant impacts on privacy and a significant expansion of digital surveillance,” said Karanicolas.

“So from that perspective, it is expanding data collection by tech companies.”

Researchers say methods such as requiring users to upload government-issued IDs could lead to pervasive surveillance, in exchange for an uncertain outcome.

A social media ban for youth under 16 has already been implemented in Australia, and Canada is now looking to be the next country placing social media and AI safety at the top of the agenda.

However, human rights advocate, Toby Mendel, says a blanket ban could run into legal issues.

“It’s just not going to fly here in Canada. Our Constitution requires restrictions on rights to be carefully designed and proportionate. And blanket bans just don’t meet that standard,” said Mendel, executive director of the Centre for Law and Democracy.

Another concern is its effectiveness. As Australia’s e-safety commissioner recently noted about 70 per cent of youth who were on social media prior to the country’s ban are still using their accounts.

At Dalhousie University on Wednesday, panelists at the report’s presentation said they’re in favour of protecting children online and addressing social media addition.

However, they say a targeted approach is necessary to make that a reality.

“We also want to see inherent changes to how platforms are designed so that they’re not incentivizing problematic impacts on society,” said Renee Black, founder of the non-profit group GoodBot, which advocates for responsible tech.

“So we don’t want to kids addicted to social media because of features like infinite scroll. We don’t want to see strangers contacting young children because they have a malicious intent and those are design features that you can control.”