Official Hansard
Madam Speaker, today I rise to speak to Bill C-34, the safe social media act. We have been hearing a lot about the duty to act responsibly, the duty to protect children, and the duty to make certain content inaccessible. When we talk about protecting our next generation, we have to talk about the digital world they are growing up in. Even as one of the youngest MPs of the House, and the youngest member of Parliament for British Columbia, I belong to a generation that experienced a full childhood before social media became part of our everyday lives. I remember a time when, after school, I would catch up with friends meeting them in person. If we wanted to talk to somebody, we picked up the land line and hoped they were home. I spent time outdoors biking with my friends to the corner store, skateboarding, playing tag and making memories away from a screen. Today is a bit of a different world, of course. Children are growing up in an environment where social media is always within reach. Endless scrolling really is endless. Instead of simply catching up with friends, they can find themselves spending hours online, caught in addictive algorithms designed to keep them scrolling for many hours. There are concerns about what they are exposed to, how online platforms influence their behaviour, and what happens to their mental health as they grow up spending more time on their phone. There are ways to mitigate this, of course. Consider YouTube, for example, which has been a bit of a leader in this space. It allows users and parents to turn off endless scrolling in the settings, to limit the addictive nature and the endless scrolling that many kids are growing up with these days. This is an example of the options we want our social media platforms to allow as settings. We cannot expect our children to navigate these challenges on their own. Protecting young people means taking a serious look at how these platforms are operating and the responsibility they have to the children who use them. Social media does create opportunities for people to connect, to explore, to learn and to express themselves, but we cannot ignore the risks that come with it, especially when it comes to their mental health and personal safety. Algorithms can amplify harmful content and expose young people to unrealistic standards, which they see day in and day out. For some people, this can contribute to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem and feelings of isolation. All these have been on the rise, as reported by psychologists, especially in younger age groups, which are using these technologies on a very frequent basis. At the same time, online platforms can also expose users to cyber-bullying, harassment, exploitation and other harmful content that can have very serious real-world consequences. In 2025, 23% of Canadian youth aged 16 to 24 reported spending almost one-third of their day on social media. Research has associated longer screen times with poorer mental health indicators, including higher levels of anxiety, depression, and psychological distress, as well as reports of suicidal ideation. This matters because protecting young Canadians is about making sure the digital world does not come at the expense of their well-being or their relationships with others. Young people need supportive environments where they can build meaningful connections and access help when they need it. We also have to recognize the role that social media platforms play in shaping what young people see online. Algorithms influence the content they are exposed to, and recommendation systems can repeatedly push harmful material onto someone’s screen. For a young person already struggling with their mental health, repeated exposure to harmful content can create additional risks. Over time, this can normalize very dangerous behaviours and make it harder for young people to seek help. It is crucial that online platforms take greater responsibility to ensure that their algorithms prioritize safety and well-being, especially for vulnerable users. It is also very important that the social media giants that are monetizing the attention span of our next generation be held accountable for the harms they are causing, and that our legislation have teeth to enforce consequences for the social media companies that are providing these harms to our youth. I will soon be introducing my own private member’s bill, which is a national strategy for suicide prevention. Of course, one of the main things it is also looking at is what some of the risk factors are for suicide, which is unfortunately all too common in our modern day and age. It is an unfortunate reality that there is content on social media that can sometimes propagate tendencies toward self-harm and toward suicidal ideation. It is very important that it is not just up to parents to regulate the things their kids are seeing and to be the police of the content their kids are taking in. That is why it is up to us as government to do that. We need to ask ourselves this: Is it fair to expect parents to manage these risks on their own while the companies designing these platforms face limited accountability? Parents are already balancing the pressures of everyday life. We cannot expect them to monitor everything that their children do 24 hours a day, particularly when kids have their own screens. We cannot constantly see everything that our kids are seeing. It is, frankly, impossible. Parents have an important role to play, of course, by setting up certain settings on devices, but protecting children cannot fall on their shoulders alone. Social media companies design these platforms. They design how content is recommended and how users interact with these services. That is why we need clear expectations for these companies. They must take meaningful steps to identify risks and reduce harm. Just as importantly, they must be transparent about what they are doing and demonstrate that their efforts are making a difference. Canadians should not have to simply take a company’s word that a platform is safe. Technology has moved faster than the rules to protect our people are keeping up. We have been slow to respond to these changing online environments, and we need to take action. As a result, harmful content can spread unchecked, and dangerous behaviours can be amplified. Vulnerable users can repeatedly be exposed to materials that put their well-being at risk. Bill C-34 takes an important step toward closing that gap by recognizing that those who design and profit from these platforms also have a responsibility to prevent foreseeable harms, the harms that they know they are causing. We should not wait for a young person to experience harm before expecting action from the companies that operate these services. The legislation would establish clear expectations from social media platforms. Companies would be required to assess the risks associated with harmful content on their services and take proactive steps to reduce those risks. Users would have access to a clear reporting and complaint mechanism so they know where to turn when they encounter harmful content or have concerns for their own safety. It is important that we make sure this happens with a very quick process, because throughout this, we do not want to see young people turn away from platforms that we are familiar with and go toward corners of the Internet that might be less regulated. That is why it is important that the legislation move quickly. If we stand these things up, we can prevent people from going to less safe corners of the Internet. Another factor here is, of course, the new challenges emerging with artificial intelligence. AI has made it easier to create fake or manipulated images that damage someone’s reputation. Some content can go viral within minutes. It can also make it much harder for people to distinguish between authentic content and material designed to mislead them. We have now entered an age where when we see a photo, it is virtually impossible to tell if that photo is real or if it has been generated in a matter of seconds by somebody on a keyboard anywhere on the planet. AI chatbots raise additional concerns, particularly when they interact with young people who are experiencing emotional distress. These interactions feel very personal, and young users may not always understand the limitations of these systems. We need appropriate safeguards to reduce the risk of harmful responses and ensure that vulnerable young people are not left without proper support. Take the example of somebody using an AI chatbot as a counsellor, for example. These chatbots are not registered counsellors and can sometimes give very misleading and harmful advice to the young people who are using them. Some government oversight is very needed here. We cannot wait until harm has already occurred before asking how these technologies should be used responsibly. Platforms must take responsibility for the risks associated with the services they provide, including the AI tools that they make available to their users.
