The Decibel - To ban or not to ban: Canadian teens weigh in on social media

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

This week, decisions in two landmark trials in the U.S. found social media companies responsible for harms to youth on their platforms. They follow years of growing concern about the dangers that social media poses to young people. Now those concerns are starting to show up in policy decisions. Back in December, Australia banned those under 16 years old from creating accounts on platforms like YouTube and TikTok. Other countries are considering similar legislation – including Canada. But what do teenagers themselves think of these potential social media bans? Samantha Edwards is The Globe’s online culture reporter. She assembled a group of Canadian teenagers to talk about how they actually use social media, what adults get wrong, and what they think about losing access to the platforms they use to talk to their friends. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail] Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The evidence that social media harms young people keeps mounting. In the U.S. this week, decisions came down in two landmark cases, finding social media companies responsible for the harm that their platforms cause to young people. In one, Meta, Facebook's parent company, was ordered to pay $375 million U.S. dollars for, quote, misleading consumers about the safety of its platforms and endangering children. That's according to the New Mexico Department of Justice, where the trial was heard. Then in California, a jury found META and YouTube liable for negligence in the design or operation of their platforms,

in that the companies knew their platforms were likely to be dangerous when used by minors. Both companies issued statements disagreeing with these verdicts and say they plan to explore their legal options. Some countries are starting to ban. social media all together for kids under a certain age. In December, Australia banned kids under 16 from having personal accounts on platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube, just to name a few. Other countries are following suit. Canada is considering a social media ban for kids under 14 as part of the government's online harms bill. We've heard from experts, teachers, parents,

lawmakers, the adults in the room. But we haven't heard much from the group this ban would affect the most. Teenagers. So Samantha Edwards, the Globe's online culture reporter, decided to get a group of teens together in an online meeting room. So this is a really casual conversation

and I'm excited to hear all of your thoughts about it. Does anyone have any questions before I kind of launched into it and start asking you guys some questions. Sam spoke with four teens from across the country. Logan, do you have Instagram? Can I ask you? Sure. They talk about how social media impacts their lives. We want to have social media.

We want to not feel FOMO. We want to experience all these things. And what they think about these social media bans. It's like drugs, I guess. You can ban it. It's still going to happen. Today, Sam is on the show to bring us into this conversation about how these teens really feel about social media. I'm Cheryl Sutherland, and this is the Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Hi, Samantha.

Thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks. I'm happy to be here. So Sam, let's start off by talking about why you wanted to host this teen panel. Like, what enticed you to do this? Well, governments all over the world have been talking about restrictive. doing social media for young people. And like Australia already passed their law. The Canadian government's kind of been considering it a bit.

And we know that lawmakers are really on board with this. Parents are on board, teachers. But we haven't heard a lot about teens and how they feel about it. So I just wanted to talk to some teens across Canada to hear their thoughts if they think a ban would be good, would it be bad? and what their issues are with social media right now. So I put a call out for teens from across the country to come chat with me for this panel. And it was really interesting to hear their thoughts.

Yeah. Okay. So tell me a bit about who you talk to, what they were like, and how long they've been on social media for. So I talked to four teens from across Canada. There's Logan. He's 17 and he lives in Calgary. The first thing I used was like Discord. made Discord to chat with my friends who I played Overwatch with.

Then after Discord around like 13, I'd say, I made an Instagram, but I barely used it because I found the like amount of content being shoved in my face kind of repulsive. And now I use both to just message with people. There's Hargan. She is 14 and is in Oakville, Ontario. Considering Roblox as a platform, I think I started in grade four. and that was also my first time on the internet. In grade six, I did use Discord a little bit, but I found it kind of confusing. But in grade seven, I started with Snapchat and Instagram. There's newer, 17, and she lives in Charlottetown.

So also considering Roblox, I did start using it in grade four as well. And then for my first social media app, it was Instagram, and I started using it in grade six. And I really had to persuade my mom a lot. to get it in order to communicate with my friends and that was the only way. There's also Theo, who is 16, and lives in Toronto. In grade six, I got an Instagram page that I shared with my sister and it was run by my mom and dad and we'd just like post random stuff, I guess. And then I started, like the first I'd say like social media platform where I started like

adding my friends was probably like Instagram in like grade eight. Okay, so some of these platforms a lot of us will be familiar with like Instagram. But what are Roblox and Discord? Those are platforms I'm not really familiar with. Okay. I think that if you have kids of a certain age, you're probably very aware of Roblox. It's basically an online gaming platform that allows players to design their own games and also play each other's games. And you can also chat with other people on the platform.

It's really popular with young people. And recently, actually, Roblox introduced a new age verification system for its users. And now users have to take a video selfie in order to prove their age. And this is partially because there's just been so much conversation around age verification for these platforms. And also they have faced some child safety lawsuits. And then what about Discord? Discord is a huge messaging platform. and users can chat through text or voice or video calls.

There's lots of different types of chats on the platform. So some are private, some are public, others are invite only. It initially was really popular with gamers, but in the past few years, there's so many different types of communities on it, like study groups or people who are organizing protests or like knitting clubs. It's just massive. And they have also said that they are updating their rules. around age verification.

And so you have to be a certain age in order to view adult content on the platform. And you wouldn't be able to enter some spaces unless you're a certain age. So it's interesting. These two platforms that we're talking about when it comes to Roblox, it's a game, but it's also a place, a social media site. And then when it comes to Discord, it was popular with gamers. And now it's becoming more of a social media site where people talk all the time as well. Yeah.

These are just really popular places for people to now chat on. And it can be with friends, it can be with strangers. And I think that's why there is concern about it because you don't always know who you're talking to online. Let's get into these discussions with the teens. First off, what was it like to sit down with them? It was really interesting. They all had some really, like, interesting perspectives on social media and they were kind

of coming at it from different places. But I was also surprised that they shared a lot. of the same opinions as well. Like a lot of the pitfalls of social media were shared. Like they all kind of felt similar about them. And they all had similar ideas on what could make these platforms better. And it was just nice to hear them have a very candid conversations. Okay, let's get into what they said.

First off, what are these teens using social media for? They use it a lot to chat with their friends and other people that they go to school with or who go to nearby schools. They also use it to post their own content and follow influencers. And similar to everyone else, just to like scroll on TikTok or Instagram and waste hours doing that. I do follow my friends and talk to them. I do follow like celebrities and certain brands on it. Like I have like people I follow on Instagram that I've never really met in real life.

So like to the point where I can't really keep track of all of them. I do like follow some like joke pages or like meme pages, but I don't really follow like celebrities or brands because like why would I? I basically just started using it to text my friends, but then it got to a point where I'm like, oh my God, FOMO, like what am I missing out on? Because everybody would be talking about these trends. And I wasn't really like a person who really like engaged in social media like in grade six when everybody had all these other apps. So I think it like particularly was just like for phone won't got to a point where I wasn't even just texting my friends. It was just to scroll and see what everyone is up to. I used to use like social media exclusively for messaging.

And then eventually I started using it for posting and then I started scrolling just because like if the people you follow look at your post, you're presumably right going to look at theirs in return. And then eventually you just get brands or something else that are shoving their way in even if you don't follow them. Sam, it sounds like these teens have kind of the same problems of social media as we adults do. I know. That was kind of surprising because you think that maybe teens' experiences would be dramatically different than adults, but they do have similar pain points. Some of the big differences, though, are around mental health and cyberbullying. And I think that just comes with being a teenager on these platforms. We'll be right back. Sam, let's talk about the age restriction.

on social media that have either been implemented in the case of Australia or being discussed by a number of countries, including Canada. Mental health seems to be at the forefront of these restrictions because of the negative impacts social media has on the mental health of teens. There are many studies that back this up. What did these teens have to say about how social media impacts their mental health? So some of the ways that the teens talked about how social media affected their mental health was self-image and doom scrolling and how that just makes you feel kind of bad afterwards. Also, cyberbullying is a part of it as well. Sometimes my mental health is affected by social media because whenever you post things, some random accounts would comments on them and they

usually comment rude things. And that just like it hurts for a couple of seconds. But I feel like that's just a part of social media. It's a part of life that I have to deal with that there are like rude and bad people out there. So I would say it affects your mental health slightly. And it depends on how strong you are and how you're willing to face those problems. Just even the guilt after doom scrolling, that's like kind of a part like that might over a long term time. It's going to plummet your mental health. You are not going to feel like yourself.

You're going to keep on comparing yourself with other people. And I think that's also a big one, your self-image. So many people or more specifically even kids at a young age. They are more prone to inflict self-harm on themselves because they think the beauty standard is the millions of filters people put on their faces every single day. I don't know if it's just like a bit of an ego thing. I do feel kind of jealous when I see people my age do better than me or get more involved than me. And I don't know.

I feel like a big contributor that is social media. I don't know. It can still negatively affect you. Something I've been thinking about, Sam, when I'm using social media, is I get caught up in these short videos, right? And you kind of just scroll and scroll and scroll. Did the teen say anything about the impact of scrolling short-form videos like reels? Yes. They said that it's very addictive.

Again, very similar to how adults feel about it. And it's a big time-waster. Like you lose track of time when you're scrolling on TikTok or Instagram Reels. and there's this weird whiplash effect when you see the different types of content you're looking at back to back. It's in such short form that your brain's processing, like for me, it just processes it all at once. And it's like, do I really care? Like I was just watching a video about cats. And now I'm watching a video about World War III potentially coming.

And I just feel like it's very unhealthy. It gets really unhealthy to a point. I'd agree with that. The short form makes you feel. feel like you aren't watching that much of content. But when I look at my screen time at the end of the day, I'm like, oh, how do I spend like one hour, 30 minutes on Instagram? What was I doing that much? Yep. I can really relate to that, right? That happens to me every once in a while where I'm just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling, especially at nighttime. And I look up and I'm like, holy,

it's been 30, 45 minutes. And it's like, what have I done with this time? I think this is very relatable and why people always try to delete these apps and go in these digital detoxes because we realize how much time we spend on them and you get the screen time reminders, which can be a bit depressing. Yeah, absolutely. And it's really interesting to hear from the teens and how it impacts their lives as well. So that is definitely maybe not as far as a harm, but it's something that they're thinking about as a way of, I don't know, impacting their lives in a way that's not as positive as they'd like it to be. I think sometimes we look at teens and we don't think that they care about their really long screen time or that they're doom scrolling. But what I learned

from this conversation is that they're really aware of these things that are happening. And they don't necessarily like it that this is how they're getting sucked in. And they're aware that the algorithms can be very addictive and is serving them content that makes them want to keep scrolling. Very relatable. What about misinformation? Especially with the advent of AI, we know that that's an increasing problem online when it comes to misinformation. Is that something they're noticing? Yes. This also surprised me.

They talked a lot about misinformation and they were very aware of it. There's a lot of misinformation about news events. This is something that Theo talked about. It's always related to news events personally. And it's usually meant to garner sympathy. Like pretty hot discussion when Charlie Kirk died. Like there was a rumor going around that like, oh man, his kids were there. and then they, like, got scared and they saw their dad die, you know, like, that didn't happen.

Like, that's just something that's someone made up in a TikTok comma section. If it were saying, like, they're making, like, fan fictions of, like, news events. And it's, like, ridiculous. Like, I don't know, I believed it. Like, why wouldn't I? It sounds like something that could happen. In some of the misinformation that they're seeing can be very innocuous, too. Here's what Logan had to say about that.

I think I get a lot of misinformation, but it's mostly on different things that I don't care about, like the NFL. I saw a post on Instagram, and it was like a stat card for, I can't remember what his name is, but it was saying something about 1.2% body fat, like a human would die on less than five. So there's never been someone with less. And it's just saying things that are completely untrue. In some of the other misinformation that they were seeing online couldn't harm them personally. For example, Noor's family was one of the first Syrian families who came to PEI as refugees during the Syrian Civil War. And that gave her a lot of perspective on understanding misinformation.

There was a lot of misinformation about my country, about the region I lived in. And I was like, whoa, this is the view of the world. What do I believe? What do I not believe? I think also what really helped me, which a lot of kids don't have, is I had a really good parent support. My parents would always talk to me and be like, what are you seeing? What do you think? Like they were always very talkative with me about what to believe and what not to believe.

So I think that really did help me in that kind of sense. But it really does affect a young person. I see that. Sam, I'm curious about what the teens you spoke to think about the solutions here. But first, what's being considered here in Canada when it comes to restrictions? So the federal government has drawn up plans to include a ban on social media for children under the age of 14. This would be part of the new online harms bill. One of the big differences between what Canada is proposing or could propose in this upcoming bill and what Australia has done is that the Australian government has implemented in the law a large fine system.

So if a social media company is found to not be booting off young people's accounts, then they get fined a large amount. It's around $33 million American under this law. The other big difference is that the Australian government has our new regulator in place that kind of oversees how the law is being implemented and whether it's working or not. and it's not clear yet that Canada would have that same sort of enforcement system. So we don't know too much yet about what Canada could propose. We'll have to kind of wait and see what is in the online harms bill. Do we know if it's working in Australia? Well, the social media companies and the Australian government have been boasting that they've kicked off millions of accounts of young people.

And so I think they're saying it's a success. If you look at what Australian teens are saying, they are bypassing the law with like AI generated videos to prove their age during these like age verification checks. They're using VPNs to show that they're accessing the internet from a different country. And they're also just creating new accounts with fake birthdays. Oh, yeah. A classic. The teens are smart. Yes.

And so it's only been three months. So it's a bit early. early to pass judgment on it. But that's just some of the early reporting on what's working and what's not coming out of Australia. So what are the teens that you spoke to think about the idea of banning access to social media platforms for kids under a certain age? They were all pretty much against a straight up ban that Australia has. And one of the big reasons is just because they don't think it would work. They know that kids are clever and smart. And if they want to get on Instagram or TikTok, they will find a way. And so a straight ban on it doesn't make a lot of sense.

Like, I think the government thinks that this ban is like making this safe for children, but children are going to find a way whether the government likes it or not. They're going to be on these platforms. And it's going to be kind of unsafe for these children because they're not meant to be on these platforms anymore, but they're still on them. So they aren't as controlled as they usually were. I don't really know if there are a lot of benefits, because if, Someone really wants to go on social media. They're going to do it whether it's allowed or not. Like, it's like drugs, I guess, where you can ban it.

It's still going to happen. Like, there are a lot of people out there who only have online friends. And there are a lot of people out there that I think would be negatively affected if we did remove, like, social media. But I feel like if they did maybe implement some things beforehand, when this all came out, it would have been way more helpful. That's a really interesting thought from Noor about there should have been some regulations implemented before social media was introduced to the world, right? But we're too far away from that now.

So I guess it's like we have to kind of backtrack and figure out how to make them safer. Yes, that is exactly the situation we're in. And I think that's why some governments are taking very drastic measures like banning for everyone under 16. So this is where we're at right now when we don't have these kind of safeguards in place ahead of time. Mm-hmm. Got to fix things right now. What kind of solutions did the teens want to see? One of the big ones they talked about was just better reporting.

Like if you see a hateful or harmful comment on social media, you can report this. But it can sometimes take a really long time to hear back or to get any sort of response from the platform. I feel like the reporting policy in social media, it's really weak. And it also takes them a lot of time to the point where you kind of forget that you reported something. And whenever they do come back and some of the comments were really hateful, they'd be like, oh, this doesn't really classify as like a hateful comment or anything. But they're like, oh, you can just block this person. So if they could just like change, maybe improve their reporting policy,

I think that would make like a huge difference on social media. So it sounds like they want to be on social media, but they want guardrails in place, especially when it comes to cyber bullying, that keeps it safe for them. That keeps it, you know, there's less hateful comments on there. Yeah, cyber bullying came up a few times. And it's one of the most harmful ways. And it's one of the reasons that these governments have cited these new laws. But it seems like an easy fix would be to have better reporting, like Hargan said. Sam, when it comes to building whatever policies we're going to have, we're talking about a bunch of adults

hashing out what they think children need to keep them safe. What do the teens you spoke to think adults get wrong about how they use social media? One of the big things is the idea of FOMO, which is the fear of missing out. Yes. And they don't think that their parents or the adults in their lives understand how that is just such a strong feeling. and how not being on social media, it can be really crushing and isolating. I feel like personally from my parents, they don't understand the concept of FOMO that much. Like, as a kid, I feel like I'm missing out on certain parts.

Like, I'm not communicating on Snapchat, like Instagram. But they're like, oh, you can, like, completely go without it. But, like, they aren't at school, so they technically don't know what goes at school and, like, what are the things that kids are talking about? And if you don't know what the things that you're, friend group, at least isn't talking about, then how are you going to be friends with them? A lot of parents don't understand that most of the time if you're being like cyber bullied on the

internet, it's usually not from people you really know. Because like, if like you go to school with someone and they're like making fun of you online, like you can talk to them the next day about it. But like if you post something and then like someone random in the comment section like clowns on you for it, like there's not a lot you can do about that. You kind of just have to take it. And that's why a lot of people do it. It's because you get a reaction. I agree with that. Like, I feel like if you have like on Instagram, like, anybody can message you and like random people can follow you. I feel like when they, when random people message you like, Prince don't understand like it's not easy to report them. It's not easy to like make

these big companies do anything about them. The best bet that you always have is just to block them. And sometimes that doesn't work because then they like text you or like comment on through their like multiple accounts. I think adults probably misunderstand how mature their children are. Just because the world is more mature, I think a lot of adults live in denial because they're so sure of how right they are. Looking at it from the positive view now, I feel like they think that everything on it is bad. Yes, mainly things on it are bad, but it's been a source of so many opportunities for youth to take a part of, and it's one of the only ways that they can know about it. So I feel like they

kind of like, oh, what are you, where are you scrolling through that? It's like, oh, like, these are opportunities for that, you know? I feel like they just think it's all bad and it's all dangerous for you, but there are some good components to it, and it's not just all bad. It's interesting to hear them talk about the good parts of social media. Sam, you report on online culture. I mean, what do you think are the parts of social media, especially for young people that are actually worth preserving. I think like Nora was just saying, it's such a good place, though,

to build community and to find like-minded individuals. And it can be hard to do that if you live in a small community, if you go to a small school, social media can be great for finding niche groups and immersing yourself in different subcultures. And I think that for some teens, there's a big fear that if they're blocked, from going on some of these social platforms when they're young,

they won't be able to find their people. And just because of the world we live in now, so much of our interactions are happening online. And it really does provide a lifeline for some people. And I think that's one of the big things is that it's good for building community. Just to end here, Sam, what are you going to take away from this conversation with the teens? Like, did anything surprise you about talking to them? I was really heartened by how thoughtful they were when they were talking about social media and how they use it.

And they had lots of nuanced opinions. They know that social media is not perfect and they had ideas on how to change it. I think sometimes when we think about teens, we just assume that of course they love social media. They're super biased. They're not going to be able to talk about the negative things with it. But they had all these teens had really nuanced opinions on it. And I really enjoyed hearing that. Sam, it's been really great to having this show.

And thank you so much for bringing us this conversation with these teens. I feel like I've learned so much. Oh, well, thank you for having me. And I'm glad that we're able to get their voices in here. I have to go now. Yeah, yeah, no. Thank you all so much. All right, bye.

Bye. Bye. That was Samantha Edwards, the Globe's online culture reporter. And thanks to Logan, Hargan, Nor, and Theo, who shared their thoughts with us. That's it for today. I'm Cheryl Sutherland. Our intern and associate producer is Finn Dermot.

Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy McLaughlin and Mahal Stein. Our editor is David Crosby. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Angela Pichenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening.