Carney government to ban social media for kids younger than 16, but will allow exemptions - National Post

Prime Minister Mark Carney with his wife Diana Fox Carney during a visit to the Vector Institute at the Schwartz Reisman Innovation Campus in Toronto, on Thursday, June 4, 2026. Photo by Peter Power/PostmediaArticle contentOTTAWA — Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government is expected to table its long-awaited legislation aimed at online safety this week, including a ban on social media platforms for children under 16 years old.

A government official, speaking on the condition of background, confirmed plans to present a bill in the coming days, which will usher in a path to create a new regulator and target different types of harmful content online.

The official confirmed that the government’s plan to establish a social media ban for minors younger than 16 will 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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The bill is expected to tabled on Wednesday, with the House of Commons set to rise for its summer break next week.

The legislation is not expected to include the same type of ban for AI chatbots, but will establish a set of responsibilities platforms need to meet.

Kaitlynn Mendes, a professor and researcher at Western University, said she welcomes the federal government’s allowance of exemptions under its social media ban, saying it creates room for platforms to fix their design, which is where she and other academics believes the focus ought to be placed.

“I’m maybe optimistic that we’ll see more of the push towards getting platforms to change their design rather than just …regulate and monitor young people, and try to chase them off these platforms, which we know doesn’t work,” she said in an interview on Monday.

She pointed to figures from Australia that suggest many children have found ways to circumvent its social media moratorium, adding there exist “larger questions” about whether such bans even work and what platforms a Canadian model would include.

When it comes to platforms making design changes, Mendes says the government could act by compelling companies to be more transparent with their data and limiting the use of features, such as auto-play.

Since taking office last year, Carney has faced calls from child safety advocates and children’s health organizations to revive efforts that were advanced under former prime minister Justin Trudeau to legislate tech platforms to tackle the harms users face.

The Trudeau government’s last bill, known as Bill C-63, died in Parliament in early 2025. Advocates and other proponents of tech regulation have argued that Canadian children are less protected than those living in the United Kingdom and Australia, which have their own online safety regimes and regulator.

Under the previous bill, the government had proposed requiring platforms to submit annual safety plans outlining how they were mitigating users’ exposure to the most harmful content online, from the non-consensual sharing of intimate images to content that encourages a minor to engage in self-harm or incites extremism.