Canada's federal government has taken a first step toward setting rules for social media companies, tabling a new bill known as the Safe Social Media Act. The legislation arrives after sustained pressure from parents who have urged the governing Liberals to help make the internet a safer place for children. With the bill now before Parliament, Ottawa is moving from talk of action to a concrete legislative proposal aimed squarely at how young people use online platforms.
At the centre of the bill is a new age threshold. The proposed law would require social media platforms to restrict accounts for children under the age of 16. Rather than leaving access entirely to the discretion of families or the companies, the measure would place a clear legal expectation on the platforms themselves to keep their youngest users from holding ordinary accounts.
The bill does, however, leave room for the companies to avoid the outright restriction. Under its terms, platforms could be exempt from the ban if they can prove they have brought in enough safeguards. That provision effectively invites the industry to demonstrate that it has put strong enough protections in place, shifting part of the responsibility onto the platforms to show their systems are robust.
The legislation also reaches into the kind of material children can encounter online. Social media giants and AI chatbots would be required to prevent children from viewing harmful content such as pornography. By naming AI chatbots alongside the traditional platforms, the bill signals an attempt to keep pace with newer technologies that have become part of how young people interact online.
Those same AI tools would carry additional obligations around user safety. Under the bill, AI chatbots would need to have a way to intervene if a user indicates a plan to harm themselves or others. The provision treats the chatbots not merely as sources of content but as systems that must be able to respond when a conversation points toward danger.
The bill further targets manipulated and abusive material. Platforms would be required to label all fake content, and to remove sexual content involving children, survivors of assault, or anything sexual posted without the person's consent, within 24 hours. The tight timeline is meant to force quick action on some of the most damaging material that can circulate online.
Enforcement would fall to a new federal body. If a platform does not act fast enough, users would be able to file a complaint with a new federal regulator that could issue orders and impose fines. Framing the stakes, supporters of the bill argued that the country is failing its children and that enough is enough, insisting that parents cannot face these challenges alone, that the safety of children cannot be an afterthought, and that basic protections are needed so every child in the country can be safe on the platforms they use every day.