The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Should Schools Ban Phones and Social Media?

Episode Date: May 12, 2026

Is limiting cellphone use in schools enough, or should Ontario go further by restricting social media and phones on school property? As the province considers tougher rules, we examine what is driving the push, whether it could improve learning, and what might be lost by narrowing students' access to digital spaces. Mohammed Estaiteyeh, assistant professor of digital pedagogies and technology literacies at Brock University, and Malini Leahy, former teacher and vice-president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers' Federation, weigh the benefits and risks. We then turn to Australia, the first country to ban social media for children under 16. How has that policy worked in practice, and what can Canada learn from it? From Sydney, Katrina Champion, associate professor at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health, joins us to explain what the evidence shows so far and what policymakers should consider next.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Nam Kiwanuka, host and producer of mistreated, a podcast on women's health. There just hasn't been a lot of money put into researching women's health issues. If women are in pain, it's hysteria, it's an emotional issue. And this is what you see consistently. Women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here? Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. Back in March, a California, jury found that meta and YouTube had designed their platforms so that young users would basically

become addicted. Does that surprise you? Good chance it doesn't, especially if you have a kid who wants to check notifications every five seconds. If so, there's also a good chance you worry about how it's affecting them and if it'll cause them harm. So what can we do to protect them? Well, Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra says he's thinking about a social media and cell phone ban on school property. Thing is, that's only part of the day. What about the rest of the time? Some are calling for a full ban for younger people like the one Australia introduced last year. We dig into how a ban would play out in Ontario schools and whether following Australia's lead would solve the problem or just raised new ones. Welcome to the rundown. Ontario has already limited cell phone

use in schools. And now, the province is considering going further, banning social media and cell phones on school property. Does that go far enough? Or is this taking us in the wrong direction? From St. Catherine's, Muhammad Estatee is an assistant professor of digital pedagogies and technology literacies at Brock University. Molini Leahy is a former teacher and currently vice president of the Ontario Secondary School Teachers Federation. Mollini, great to have you in our Studios. Mohamed, great to have you on the line. Now, to set the table for our discussion, I want to play a clip from the Education Minister, Paul Calandra, at a press conference on April 28th. Let's have a list. I think the evidence is becoming more and more clear that cell phone use in our schools,

elementary and our secondary schools, anywhere on site, has become a problem. So we are considering an outright ban of cell phones on school properties across the province. of Ontario. Obviously, for health reasons, we'll allow some exemptions to that. And we are going to be working closely with the federal government with respect to a more broader social media bam, frankly, for kids under a certain age. I know the federal government is interested in that. All right. So we'll delve into a little bit of that, but I want to get our initial reactions. Before I do that, I should mention that we did ask the education minister, Paul Calandra, to join us on our program, but he did not get back in time for our.

broadcasts. Okay, with that, Muhammad, what are your thoughts on Kalandra's announcement? For starters, it's good that this issue is finally getting some attention in terms of policy and government announcements. Cell phones, social media, and now AI in schools have been on our radar for a long time as students and teachers. And this is a step forward. My three initial thoughts are. First, these are three separate complex problems and complex problems cannot be solved with simple solution. They require collaboration and consultations among all stakeholders, including the government, educators, families, school boards, researchers, and definitely the tech companies. Second, bans usually are not a fix. Prohibition without education as a deferral of the

problem rather than a solution to it. Whatever restrictions go in place, they must be paired with ongoing teaching in digital literacy, digital citizenship, and AI literacy. Otherwise, we're just removing the devices from the hands of the kids without teaching them how to handle those devices when they leave the school. And my final thought is, what's actually new here? Ontario has had restrictions on cell phones in 2019 and 2020. quite recently.

So the first question that came to my mind is, what a ban like this would change in practice and whether we relied on certain evaluation data from the 2024 policy in order to expand this decision? Are we building on those data and research or we are just moving ahead of it? All right, Malini. Yes, well, I think the empirical evidence

is there to show that, certainly cell phone use and social media has certainly had a negative psychological impact on adolescents largely. And so it is a step forward, as Muhammad says. However, for me, as an educator and the teachers and education workers that I represent, it's and what, right? So if you put a ban, a complete ban in place, what are the supports that are going into place? For these students who are suffering from mental health issues or who use the technology as support. So text to speech or translation. Right now, many of the schools and boards across the province have a bring your own device policy. For many of the students, that is their only device that they have. So if you

ban it and students are sharing, say, a laptop with parents and they don't have any device now that they can use, what other supports are you putting into place? In the past eight years, this government has cut funding out of education. And a cell phone ban on its own is not going to solve a very complex problem, as Muhammad says. You need to ensure that you're having those conversations with the people who are in front of those students every day to understand what is needed. And, you know, the ban, well, it is a step forward. It doesn't address and is not going to fix the violence that's happening in our classrooms every day.

It's not going to fix the overcrowded classrooms. And it's certainly not going to fix the lack of supports. When we are losing mental health workers, we're losing EAs, we're losing supports in our classrooms for those very students that would need those assistive devices. There's another hat that you wear as well. You were formerly in the classroom. And we talk about sort of enforcement. Help me understand a little bit of the challenges.

A teacher in a classroom with 20 plus students with cell phones having to manage and navigate that. Yes. Many of our classrooms have over 30 students. But I will say even when I was in the classroom before there was an actual social media or cell phone ban or rather restrictions, you know, you still tried to that students weren't on their phone. However, there were examples in my professional judgment where if a student needed it for speech to text and they didn't have another device or I had students who really struggled with once I was done teaching that lesson would want to put their headphones on and listen to music

so that they could focus. It was an accommodation perhaps not in an individual education plan but certainly an accommodation that was easy to provide Now I've talked to several teachers and education workers across the province and in trying to implement this partial ban, it's really been difficult. And I know there were concerns originally, you know, oh, you know, I don't want to be responsible or liable for a student's phone. However, when I'm talking to teachers and education workers now, I just spoke to Mary the other day and she said, you know, we've given up on that ban. We can't monitor if they are putting that cell phone away in the cubby hole because they're hiding it in their clothes and then they're taking it out in class. And absolutely, they will send them down and they're following the directions. They send them down.

Now that student who is missing a piece of class time, instructional time, that that student may require. and they're missing often at the beginning of class, because that's when they're taking it out, and that's the teacher instructional time. And the principals and vice principals now are left with, now taking that home and holding it for a day. Other than that, there's no consequence. So if you take away the actual support that they need in the classroom,

they're actually struggling more in your classroom, and they're missing chunks of information. And if you're going to put in those restrictions, there needs to be real consequences. All right. Well, let's pick up on some of that. Muhammad, the landscape of classrooms has changed significantly. When I was in school, we did not have all of this tech and all of these gadgets available. Help me understand a little bit how technology is used in the classroom right now.

Thank you. This is a great question because when people hear technology in schools, they may think or only pictures students on scrolling on their phones. But actually the reality of classroom technology is much broader and much more beneficial than that. It's pedagogically grounded. Teachers use digital tools for interactive activities or multimedia, for virtual labs and virtual museums to visit places that they cannot visit in other ways or online simulations that they can use to explore certain phenomena,

educational games, gamified learning are a big thing in education, building foundational computer skills, research, collaborative work, design and creation tasks, and digital assessment tasks as well. And more recently, coding is now a curricular requirement in Ontario's science and math curriculum. So it's no longer an extracurricular or an optional component in schools. It is an expectation that students must learn. So when we talk about technology in the classroom, we are talking about all of those pedagogical tools

that facilitate teaching and definitely benefit the students. Mohamed, you mentioned AI chatbots a little bit earlier. Manitoba Premier Wabkinu is moving towards banning youth from accessing AI chatbots like co-pilot, like chat GPT. What potential implications could this have? So we have to distinguish between AI and social media. Manitoba bundled social media and AI chatbots in a recent announcement, and Ontario may follow.

Now, this is problematic because AI tools and social media are pedagogically and ethically different tools. So if we bundle them together, we are risking under-regulating social media and over-restricting AI tools. AI tools are now being organically deployed in... software that schools deploy, such as learning management systems, such as search engines. If a student does a Google search now, the first thing they will get is an AI overview. So they are interacting with those AI tools, whether we ban it or not. How is it possible to deal with this? This is problematic.

Now, there's also a broader inconsistency here. We are hearing about banning personal devices and AI chatbots, schools. However, we are also hearing from the government about more investment in STEM education, which is science, technology, engineering, and math. So the technology piece is very crucial in STEM education. The messaging here is a bit inconsistent for educators, for policymakers, for families, and for students themselves. Given all the prevalence of AI tools and everything that our students are using these days, AI literacy is now required

competence. We have to teach our students about how to use AI tools and how to critically use them and how to navigate those tools, how to understand what they can do and what they cannot, to understand how they work so that they can use them critically and ethically. And if they decide not to use them, that's completely their right. But at the end of the day, they have to be educated about the benefits and the limitations of those tools and they will, make their decisions accordingly. Hence, AI electricity is a crucial component of the curriculum that we need to start incorporating rather than just treating AI tools and AI chat boots as just like social media by restricting them. All right, I need to talk about what we've been seeing sort of... Can I just build on that?

Sure, sure, very quickly. Yeah, very quickly. I mean, I will go a step further and say, it's actually hypocritical of the government. This is a government that introduced mandatory e-learning. And the way they fund school boards now, they're forcing school boards to offer more and more online courses

based on the funding. And so to say we need students off screens and off social media, but now you also need to take courses online, you're actually being hypocritical in forcing them into these domains of online learning and then saying, and we're not going to allow you the tools that you need. Okay. All right. In recent weeks, we have seen parents and children

rallying at Parliament Hill to bring back the Online Harms Act. There was a Leje poll that reported more than two-thirds of Canadians support a social media ban. Federal government also reconvened an expert group to kind of look into online safety. It seems like most Canadians are in agreement that something must be done. Help me understand here,

because it seems like you guys are both parents as well. Shouldn't be up to parents to control how their children are behaving online. Polany? I think there's a duty of care on the tech companies, a duty of care on the government, and absolutely on the community as a whole. And that includes educators. It includes parents.

It can't be a ban where only one set of people are in charge of moderators. that. It's really easy to say, oh, parents should be responsible for this. We have parents that are working two jobs and adolescents that are allowed to be on their own, and to monitor them 24 hours is just, it's just not possible. And I would say the same thing for teachers and educators that are in front, to spend their time monitoring this and trying to enforce it just adds another layer of responsibility while they're trying to teach and deliver their curriculum. And at the same time, remember that, you know, these classrooms aren't just a place of learning curriculum, but that role modeling, learning from others, learning those social cues,

those are key. And yet we're, you know, we talk about the responsibility, I believe, being more than just parents and educators. I think that companies and this government absolutely has a duty of care. All right. I want to get us towards sort of some solutions in how parents can help protect and teachers and everyone around the table protect kids and teens from harms on social media without a total ban. Mohamed?

So the first thing I would say is being proactive rather than being reactive. As Malim said, we need to have. guardrails on the tech companies. Those platforms are designed to be addictive. This is beyond the capacity of parents to deal with. They definitely have a role to do in terms of limiting the screen time of their kids and so on, but it's beyond their capacity to do that. So the restrictions are needed at the level of the platforms that our kids are using. In terms of being proactive, as I said earlier, we need the education piece to go side by side with any band that is going to happen.

We need to teach our kids about AI literacy, about digital media literacy, and about all of those skills that they need to acquire. Otherwise, we are not equipping them for the future. The responsibility here is shared. The governments have to do something. Educators have to play a role here and the parents as well. Now, on a final note here with respect to our responsibility, and how we can protect our kids.

In addition to putting all the laws in place, and I'm glad that you mentioned the Online Harm Act, because it's a stepstone here. We need to offer the alternative. We cannot just ban social media without offering the alternative for our kids in terms of extracurricular activities, afternoon clubs, these arts and sports programs,

all of these, they require investment from the governments and the community organizations. Currently, we don't have a business We don't have enough of those. And the issue is even more severe and underserved communities and for underserved families that cannot afford for those programs. So if we ban those tools, what's the alternative for those kids?

This is a major issue that we have to address in order to comprehensively address the problem at hand. Malini, I see you nodding there. You get the last word on that. Thank you. No, I completely. agree with Mohammed, this government has to invest in the other infrastructures that provide everything from play-based learning to free play to those extracurriculars that Muhammad mentions.

And again, I would go a step further and say that the government needs to invest from my perspective and from our members' perspective across the province, invest in education so that the supports that are needed that students are using. will be there so that all students can be successful. Bahamit, Pallani, we're going to leave it there. I really appreciate your time and your insights on this. Thank you. Thank you.

Australia was the first in the world when it banned social media for children under 16 back in 2025. We look at how it's played out since and what Canada can learn from their example. From Sydney, Australia, Katrina Champion is an associate professor at the University of Scyndy. Sydney's School of Public Health, and she joins me on the line. Great to have you, Katrina. How are you doing today? Well, thanks. Thanks for having me. Of course. Give us a sense of how Australians

have reacted since the ban has been put in place. It's been about five months. But what's the general conversation like? Yes. So it still is early days. We're about five months in to our social media ban here. And I would say suddenly before the ban, there was quite widespread public support, particularly by parents. They were quite eager to have this ban in place, understandably. But there were some people like myself and other researchers and experts who were a bit skeptical, just curious about how this was all going to play out and how things would be enforced and how it would work on a practical level. So it's been quite interesting to watch and see what's happened. What I would say since December, what we're seeing is that there have been some action by

the platforms, the tech companies. So our e-safety commission, which is the independent regulatory body in Australia that is responsible for this social media ban, released a report recently in March, 26. And what that showed us was that about 5 million accounts for people who are under the age of 16 have been removed, restricted or deactivated. And that happened quite quickly. That happened in about mid-December. So there was quite this big initial response, I guess. And it sounds quite impressive, but I would just flag that this is accounts, not the number of people. And of course, we know that many people hold multiple accounts across the different platforms. In terms of positives, I know that, as you mentioned, still early days, but have we seen some positive outcomes so far from the ban?

I mean, I think that in itself is a positive outcome that the big tech companies are actually doing something. Some of them have been compliant. In terms of other positive outcomes, I do think it's a little bit too early to say on a small scale level, we have heard from some parents that their children have decided not to use social media anymore. But by and large, I think it's too early to tell. And something I think that's important to point out is that a substantial proportion of young Australians under the age of 16 are still on social media. So different research studies and that same report. from the e-safety commissioner tells us that young people actually are continuing to be able to access

social media and to have accounts despite the legislation. Well, help us understand what is being done with enforcement? What does that look like for an Australian who's under 16 who is logging into an account? What does that look like? So really the responsibility lies with the platforms, with the tech companies. So it's up to them to not allow people under the age of 16 to create or have an account. on their platform. They are meant to be taking reasonable steps.

That's the language in the legislation to prevent people under the age of 16 from holding an account. In terms of who's responsible for monitoring and enforcing that, that comes back to the E-Safety Commissioner, so our independent regulatory body. And they are monitoring the platforms to make sure that they are taking these reasonable steps. That's where it starts to get a little bit complicated because it's not a simple kind of one size fits all approach.

From my understanding, it's quite context dependent. It's case by pace. There needs to be a kind of body of evidence built up over time for them to then be able to enforce that platform who then can face fines up to nearly $50 million for noncompliance. Help us understand. I know this all depends on the apps that people are using, but is it them kind of scrolling through sort of an age verification? Is it photos, facial recognition that is sort of at play?

What is the actual sort of the nitty gritty on the apps? Yeah. So again, it depends on the app or the platform. It's up to them how they are being compliant. They are using a range of different age verification and age assurance systems to stay compliant. But that's where it seems to fall down a little bit. So we know that young people have been very easily able to circumvent these age verification processes. So there's facial recognition software that isn't particularly good.

So young people have been able to get around that. And then in terms of ID verification checks, we know that young people have just been using older peers, IDs, their parents even. So I think real learning that's come out of that is that the age verification systems are not working very well at all. Fair to say that there isn't much stopping children from making fake accounts or accessing social media? It doesn't sound like it. It sounds like they can very easily get onto the apps and the platforms that they wanted to. So some young people even said that their accounts weren't deactivated. So they had no issues at all.

Their accounts weren't blocked at all. And then the others who did face age verification barriers were able to get past them really quickly. Let's talk about on the other side of things when we talk about privacy concerns, data collection. What has the public reaction been to those concerns? Yeah, I think there's been quite a bit of concern around the privacy issues, and that again comes back mainly to their age verification. I think, you know, enforcing this type of ban and being able to have to verify someone's age does require sensitive data. So these age assurance processes are really problematic,

and there's risks of scams and data breaches. And it's really quite messy, particularly when we're talking about young people. So I think that there needs to be a bit of a balancing act here between trying to protect our young people from the harms, the potential harms of social media without creating these new risks about privacy and data misuse and security. Well, with that being said, what has the ban revealed sort of about the effectiveness,

effectiveness of a ban like this on the well-being of children? and social media. So I think in terms of the impact of the ban on well-being, that's certainly too early to say. I think for that, we need to be collecting data over a much longer period to be able to understand if there are any impacts on young people's mental health and well-being

and also on their other health behaviours, such as their sleep and physical activity, which arguably are neglected when they're spending so much time on screens. We do know that there is a... a formal evaluation underway. So the e-safety commissioner has commissioned an evaluation, led by researchers at Stanford University. So they're following a group of young people, 10 to 16, about 4,000 of them and their parents

over two years. And so I think once that data starts to come out later this year, I think it's expected, we'll start to be able to have a bit of a better idea on whether the ban has had an impact on young people's health and well-being. As you know, all eyes have been on Australia. in terms of looking at it from the from our side here in Canada, but a number of countries as to how Australia was going to do this. And I am curious, as we mentioned, still early days,

but what lessons can Canada learn from Australia when it comes to this ban? Yeah, I think, again, I think we need to treat our test case here in Australia as a bit of a longer term experiment. So I would, you know, say be a bit cautious, watch and wait, wait for some more data. to come out, which should be coming out later this year. There's lots and lots of research, including my own research at our center at the University of Sydney that will be coming out over time. So we'll have a better picture then.

In the meantime, I would say focus on digital literacy, education for parents and teens, making sure that they have the best possible knowledge to navigate online spaces safely. And also wanting to point out that even this, one of the biggest criticisms, of the ban is that limiting access and stopping young people from having accounts doesn't automatically make social media safer. It doesn't take away some of those harmful aspects. It doesn't reduce the actual content. It doesn't reduce the design features on the platforms and on the apps,

so that the algorithms, the endless scrolling. So I think I would also say that push back against the big tech to make them put the responsibility back on the platform. to make them make changes as well as as well as these bands. Guccina, we are going to leave it there, but I really appreciate your time to chat about Australia's social media ban so far. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me.

I'm Jan. Thanks for watching The Rundown. What do you think? When do you think kids should be able to have their own cell phones? And how young is too young to use social media? Let us know. Email us at rundown at tbO.org. or as always, you can leave us a comment on our YouTube page. Until then, I will see you tomorrow.

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