To me, it's more regulating the behaviour of people than regulating the developers of intentionally addictive and intentionally poorly-moderated systems.

The big hegemonic tech platforms, as they currently exist, are not just harmful to adolescents, they're harmful to society as a whole.

I also don't enjoy the prospect of how a ban like this might be implemented in terms of age and identity verification, since I expect it's going look like "hand the data brokers even more of your personal data, they pinky-swear they'll only use it to comply with the law".

Not directly.

Instead of reigning in big tech with legislation that would make social medias less harmful **for everyone **, politicians make a bullshit law that will infringe on people privacy even more and will be bypassed by any teenager with at least half a functioning brain cell.

If you're being serious, proper taxation, proper intellectual rights enforcement, age enforcement, appropriate moderation of harmful content, limiting hate speech and promotion of Canadian content / artists similar to other mediums.

Which is why it should be illegal, but enforcement should be light.

It's ridiculous to require websites to validate users ages. That's either a massive security vulnerability waiting to be exploited, or pointlessly easy to bypass.

Instead, we should treat it like "bad parenting" and treated like a form of neglect, with social workers helping parents learn about the harms of social media.

Then, we don't lose our civil liberties and human rights while still "protecting the kids". Let's put the millions of dollars that the age verification middleware was going to charge and put that money towards social workers and mental health counsellors, eh?

But, most of all, we need to make addictive patterns* themselves illegal, and also the dark patterns that trick users into making choices that benefit the platform over their own interests.

* Although I worry that they might make videogames that depend on random chance illegal, too. Loot collection RPGs are only fun because of the random chance at loot, but I worry they'll be caught by "gatcha/loot box regulations" if the laws are written by clueless politicians.

Don't trust you kid with public WiFi? Don't give them a device that can use public WiFI. Lock it down or lock it up.

Don't want to put in the effort to supply your kids with a safe device that gives them a filtered experience, well that just sounds like you don't want to be a parent.

Parental apathy is paving the way to a locked down internet.

I don't see how uploading a picture with my personal information to every website I visit would be a solution to this through. Now what about enthusiasts that want to host a website for a blog (like myself) do I need to start to collect your personal information when you choose to visit my website? What will I be able to do with said information?

Instead a simple solution would be something similar to what libraries and librarians do.

Websites should be classified based on age brackets, genres, and any other useful identifying information similar to how books are classified in libraries.

I would propose that a local government funded initiative be setup that to allows the same equivalent of a librarian to curate the internet into defined whitelists based on these criteria.

From there parent then can choose or not choose to activate these specific whitelists either at the home network level or device level.

All this tech already exists, and for tech-savvy users, this functions basically the same way as a pihole or AdGuard, these can also be completely setup both in your home network and still function while out.

slippery slope

The negative effects of social medias as they are today is plenty documented.

It is harmful for literally everyone. But big tech made it so that they integrated themselves in pretty much everything.

Lots of organizations use Facebook groups to vehiculate important information, that won't be elsewhere.

This bullshit law is lazy and a way to bullshit people when politicians are pressed about what they are doing to curb social medias created societal issues.

Yes, parents are responsible for what their kids are watching, but it is extremely hard to avoid social medias because they were closely integrated into our everyday life.

Right?? Like why tf should i have to show my id to buy beer and weed??

There are a lot of things parents can do on their own, but their mental capacity is limited

Don't want to be a parent in the 2000s? Don't be one.

It is 100% up to the parent(s) to supply and restrict access to the internet and internet connected devices. If that is beyond your capabilities as a parent-aged human in 2026 then you fucking dropped the ball. We are the "digital natives", we all grew up with an internet connection, some parents have never known a time without smart phones. A failure to learn about and understand how to use modern technology today is incredible.

And yet there seems to be a disproportionate number of users here ready to bend over and take the dry dystopian dick of authority in order to avoid policing their own children.

People love to cry it’s the parents like parents aren’t generally being worked to the bone just to keep a roof over their kids heads and food on the table they also need to be ever present hawks of everything their kid does but also not be a helicopter parent who sheltered their kids too much etc. it’s an unwinnable game and parents are in the same capitalist meat grinder as the rest of us

Adults are also victims of algorithm-induced radicalization. We wouldn't have Trump if Facebook wasn't allowed to push right-wing madness on anyone they deemed that it would "increase engagement"

The issue is how it will be enacted. It will invariably require transmitting personally identifying information across a network and for it to be stored somewhere for processing. Even if this is done as safely as possible with government systems, there is always the risk of data theft and exposure as well as excluding people that don't trust the government at all, like pretty much every Indigenous person I've ever met.

It as well provides the government with a system and store of information that could be used as tool of oppression.

Australian/Canadian here.

I can assure you that kids in Australia are just using VPNs. You need global type of ID system to get around VPNs from a specific place. That didn't turn out well for Discord when they tried to implement global ID.

My solution is government signed Zero Knowledge Proofs for age. Be weary of anyone who says we need to take away your freedoms to protect the children, when there's easy ways of doing it without taking your freedoms.

But how do you uphold a social media ban based on age without some form of age verification process?

No thank you on submitting my ID just for it to be leaked in some data breach down the line.