Pediatricians Urge Carney Government to Prioritize New Online Safety Law

The views and opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the authors and not those of their employers.

Children and youth are being hurt online. As the new Carney government develops its online safety legislation, we’re calling on the Prime Minister to hold social media platforms accountable in keeping our kids safe online.

Imagine cars without seatbelts. Cribs with dangerous drop sides. Toys with hidden choking hazards. Reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous. Yet this is the reality children and youth face every day in the digital world. With no pediatric-specific safeguards, children and youth are left to navigate toxic algorithms, addictive platforms, and predatory content with no basic safety standards designed with their well-being in mind.

Too many kids are being hurt online. As doctors, we see the negative impact on our patients. We see parents struggling to protect their children. And we hear from kids themselves that they are experiencing harm. Canadians overwhelmingly agree that the government should address this generational hazard.

Last year, Bill C-63, the Online Harms Act, sought to address this problem, but the bill died when the previous Parliament was prorogued. In the election campaign which followed, Prime Minister Carney promised to “introduce legislation to protect children from horrific crimes including online sexploitation and extortion.” This is important, but it doesn’t go far enough to encompass the myriad harms built into social media companies’ business model.

Research confirms what we are seeing on the ground: excessive time spent on social media and online gaming platforms increases the risk of mental health problems, with specific associations to depression, body dysmorphia, and cybervictimization. These harms don’t stay online. They lead children and youth to our emergency departments. Every day, we treat young children in crisis: those who are self-harming, battling with eating disorders, overwhelmed by anxiety, and those who have been victims of online sexual exploitation.

This is not an unsolvable problem. Peer countries around the world have chosen to act. The United Kingdom, European Union, Australia, and others have passed legislation and are well on their way to implementing policy solutions to decrease online harm for children. While the solutions themselves have been varied, they all have one thing in common – a recognition that children face an unacceptable and unnecessary risk, and to do nothing would be reckless, irresponsible, and dangerous.

As a national problem, children’s online safety merits a national response.

Parents, schools, hospitals, and provinces have been left to deal with the fallout. British Columbia attempted to have social media platforms sign on to a declaration to keep kids safe online, without success. Quebec’s National Assembly released a report last month calling for a social media ban for children and strict regulation of online influencers. Nearly every province has implemented a cellphone ban in classrooms, though data shows that these policies do not change the amount of time kids spend online at home.

At a minimum, federal online safety legislation must include a specific focus on young people, with clear responsibilities placed on platforms to ensure children and youth are safe while using their services. This means the enforcement of age-appropriate design standards, the prohibition of data collection on kids, and the elimination of advertising to young people. Unfortunately, these protections were not developed enough in the Online Harms Act. Prime Minister Carney now has a chance to correct this.

Parental controls and safety features should also be mandatory. Platforms that host user-uploaded content must not be permitted to facilitate or ignore content that sexually victimizes children. And online platforms should be prohibited from employing manipulative and addictive design features, such as algorithmically driven engagement tactics that exploit developmental vulnerabilities in a young mind. Fundamental to success, we need a public-interest regulator empowered to oversee and enforce these protections.

Canadian kids deserve to be just as safe as kids growing up elsewhere around the world. Our government needs to urgently prioritize new legislation to make it happen and work with opposition parties to pass it in a minority Parliament. We have long accepted government-mandated protections in the physical world to keep young people safe. Our government has a responsibility to ensure the online world is safe, as well.