Opinion: Under-16 social media ban not the fix we need

There is no doubt that social media can be harmful to youth, and we need to do more to protect their well-being online. But banning children from those platforms will not solve the issue.

Faced with growing concerns for young people’s declining mental health, the Australian government enacted a ban of children under 16 from social media. Now, three months later, the Canadian government — like France, Spain and other countries — is contemplating a similar policy.

However, it is too soon to tell the impacts of the Australian law, and there are good reasons to be skeptical of such a radical measure.

Parents, teachers and children know all too well that social media can cause harms. Cyberbullying, social comparisons and addictive use are sources of stress among youth, interfering with their mental health, relationships, lifestyle and academic success.

Yet we also know that the time spent on social media, on its own, does not contribute to mental health problems. As with food, quality matters more than quantity. This observation, backed by years of research, tells us to pay closer attention to how adolescents use social media, and what contents they are exposed too.

Key functions of social media for young people are to stay connected with their friends and stay informed of the latest trends and news. Many show creative uses of social media for expressing themselves and showcasing their craft, arts and humour. Others, struggling with isolation in school, leverage social media to find peers with common interests, such as video games, and shared experiences, such as belonging to a minority group.

Because social media can have benefits, some teens would negatively be affected by a ban. It would also limit our ability to teach young people (before they reach 16 years) how to use social media in a balanced way. Community organizations such as LeCIEL have done remarkable work visiting schools across the province to support teens’ critical thinking online.

And what will happen if we remove children under 16 from social media? The evidence from Australia is mixed. According to a report from eSafety, 4 million social media accounts were removed or restricted since December 2025, but 70 per cent of parents report that their children still have a social media account. Some parents and children see benefits of the ban, but the number of online harms complaints remains unchanged compared to last year.

Indeed, banning children from social media is not simple. Social media platforms have deployed weak, easily circumvented mechanisms for age verification. Tech-savvy teens have tools and platforms at their disposal to maintain access to social media under a ban. Meanwhile, their online activities go further out of reach of parental and school supervision — a secrecy that could prevent adults from intervening quickly when things go sour.

If the federal government wishes to promote children’s well-being online, there are better alternatives than a ban for under-16s. Most social platforms already limit access to a minimum of 13 years old, a threshold that might better align with adolescents’ evolving needs and capacity to use technology critically.

Beyond age limits, there is an urgent need for more regulation around the addictive characteristics of social media that make its use so difficult to control. Health warnings, parental supervision, a limit on infinite scrolling and more transparency are some of the measures we could demand of tech giants.

Such regulations, combined with increased efforts aimed at educating and empowering young people, are our best bet for promoting their mental health in the digital age.

Vincent Paquin is a psychiatrist, researcher and assistant professor at McGill University.

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