Canada’s federal government in Ottawa has introduced legislation that would ban social media for children and youth under age 16.
The new digital safety bill provides exemptions for social media platforms that meet certain safety standards.
With the new legislation, Canada is following the lead of Australia, which enacted the world's first social media ban for young people earlier this year.
The legislation also aims to make artificial intelligence (A.I.) chatbots safer by setting up a digital regulator to establish safety standards.
Children’s advocates have been lobbying politicians to reign in social media and screen time for youth, arguing that it has a negative impact on their mental health.
Recently, Canadian families impacted by one of the country's worst mass shootings sued ?OpenAI, alleging that the company knew the killer was planning the attack on ChatGPT but failed to warn police.
The legislation is expected to take about year to wind its way through Parliament. Canada’s government is due to break for summer at the end of June.
If implemented, the social media ban could impact companies such as Meta Platforms (META), Reddit (RDDT) and Snapchat (SNAP), among others.
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