Max Anderson is 13 years old and lives in Winnipeg. Like most Canadian teenagers, he uses social media. But he isn’t using it primarily to keep up with friends. Max watches videos on YouTube about fixing dirt bikes because he would like to get one someday, and he searches online for answers that “aren’t taught in school.”
That’s why Max is worried about Bill C-34, the crackdown on social media use proposed by the government last month. Of all the changes that would be imposed on social media platforms if the bill becomes law, perhaps the most sweeping is a prohibition on social media accounts for anyone younger than 16. The platforms would have to implement age verification or estimation procedures “adequate” enough to enforce the age restriction.
The idea seems widely popular among Canadian teenagers. Over 80 percent of those surveyed by market research and polling firm Ipsos said they support a minimum age requirement. Nearly 70 percent said they saw “content that was not appropriate for their age” between 11 and 15. Older teenagers were more apprehensive about what younger teenagers might be exposed to on social media than those younger teenagers were.
