Expert warns of ‘unintended consequences’ if Canada implements youth social media ban

Matt Hatfield from OpenMedia on how Australia will implement a social media ban for young people, but how it could have negative consequences.

Australia’s first-of-its-kind legislation that restricts young people from using popular social media sites came into effect Wednesday, and other countries are considering following suit, but an expert says a similar blanket ban for youth isn’t likely to work in Canada.

Australians under the age of 16 are no longer legally permitted to have accounts on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, X, YouTube, Snapchat, Reddit, Kick, Twitch or TikTok.

As of Wednesday, those platforms were expected to have removed any accounts in violation of the new law and to have measures put in place to prevent those teens from making new ones.

Though many of the world’s lawmakers agree that social media use can be harmful for young people, Australia’s decision to ban youth from using it altogether is “an extremely blunt tool to quite a complex web of different problems for young people,” said Matt Hatfield.

“It may help some of these problems partially, but I don’t think that it will deal with some of the other problems, and it could have some really unintended negative consequences,” Hatfield, executive director of Vancouver-based non-profit Open Media, told CTV’s Your Morning Wednesday.

“So, we wouldn’t really recommend Canada rush to follow suit.”

Some proponents of Australia’s new law may expect it to bring youth back to something resembling the pre-internet era, but that isn’t going to happen, Hatfield argued.

“Young people are still going to have private messaging, they’re going to have other platforms like Discord, and so a lot of the problems that we do see for young people online, things like online bullying, I think will just move to other spaces,” he said.

Hatfield also said that youth who manage to get around the ban – and he expects there will be many who do – may be less likely to seek help from an adult if they run into trouble on platforms they are accessing illegally.

Because of these challenges, Hatfield said Canadian lawmakers should wait to see whether or not Australia’s new restrictions work as intended before trying to implement anything similar here.

“Really, it’s an open question how well this is going to work at all. So, I think until we have a clear indicator of what the consequences of it will be in Australia, it would be really bold and perhaps foolhardy for Canada to do the same thing,” he said.

Instead, there are “more nuanced” approaches that can be taken to tackle the issue of youth online safety in Canada, argued Hatfield.

Rather than banning people from using a certain site, the platforms themselves could be held to higher safety standards when it comes to what appears on a young user’s algorithm, he said, adding “that’s a much gentler and probably more appropriate approach.”