Jesse Kline: Mark Carney wants to raise your kids

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According to a recent survey from the polling firm Pureprofile, nearly eight in 10 Australian kids under the age of 16 are still accessing banned social media sites, despite the restrictions, and 94 per cent continue to use some form of social media, having in many cases switched to platforms that “aren’t necessarily safer.”

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Australia, you see, was very selective in terms of which sites would be declared off-limits. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, X, TikTok, Reddit, Snapchat and Twitch are treated like purveyors of porno mags and cigarettes, while Facebook Messenger, Discord, WhatsApp and Steam are completely kosher.

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Some may suggest the answer is to ban youth from using all these sites. But it’s simply not possible to block an entire generation from using modern communications tools, unless they’re prevented from using internet-connected devices entirely.

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If kids are cut off from the platforms offered by big tech, they’ll simply switch to smaller, offshore sites that can’t easily be controlled by governments, or move to the dark web where child predation is even more rampant.

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Based on recent reporting, it would appear as though Ottawa’s solution is not to try to ban social media for people under 16, but to use the threat of doing so to force companies to comply with whatever regulatory regime bureaucrats dream up.

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As the Post reported earlier this week, the government plans to “include provisions that allow platforms to seek exemptions should they demonstrate an ability to keep the youngest Canadians safe while using their products online.”

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Many parents support a government-imposed social media ban because they see it as a zero-sum game: preventing some kids from using the platforms turns them into social outcasts, but a blanket ban ensures none of them can use the services. Yet that doesn’t appear to be what the Canadian government is proposing.

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The risk is that the legislation will create a costly new censorship bureaucracy whose mandate will eventually expand beyond the protection of children, and that in its effort to keep kids safe, the government will end up trampling on the free speech and privacy rights of law-abiding adults.

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In Britain, for example, similar legislation allows the government regulator to block entire websites, impose fines on foreign companies that fail to implement the U.K.’s failed age-verification regimen, which prevents people without personal devices or IDs from accessing large swaths of the internet, places undue hardship on non-profits and community projects, and causes risk-averse platforms to take down or restrict more content than they should.

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And that’s ultimately the point: governments have been trying for years to bring cyberspace under their boots and regulate all aspects of our digital existence, as they do in the physical world. Protecting children is the perfect excuse to do just that.

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As the Australian experience shows, however, keeping kids safe is — and always will be — their parents’ responsibility. (Pureprofile found that 40 per cent of Australian parents say they’re having trouble enforcing the rules, showing that there is only so much the state can do.)

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As both the Canadian and American psychological associations admit, social media use in adolescence can have both positive and negative side effects, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to mitigate them.