Social media ban would need oversight, mother of exploited teen tells MPs

OTTAWA — A ban on social media for children would need oversight and monitoring of the tech industry in order to work, online safety advocate Carol Todd told members of Parliament Tuesday.

“If we’re going to encourage and create a social media … ban in Canada, we have to ensure that there are safety designs to monitor it, to oversee it,” said Todd, whose daughter Amanda died by suicide in 2012 after experiencing online sextortion.

“Oversight is a big part of … when the government brings in an online safety act. Because if we don’t, who is going to oversee that things are being done properly with the tech industry?”

Todd appeared before a Parliamentary committee studying the effects of influencers and social media content on children and adolescents.

Both Todd and Sara Austin, founder of Children First Canada, urged MPs to quickly pass an online safety bill.

“While Parliament studies, platforms profit and while committees debate, kids pay the price. Every day of delay costs children something they cannot get back — a day of their childhood,” Austin said.

The Liberal government recently confirmed it’s working on a bill to address online harms, but has not said if it will ban social media for youth. The Liberals previously proposed an online harms bill in 2024 but it never became law.

Advocates and experts have called on the government to bring back the provisions in that bill.

The online harms act would have required social media companies to explain how they plan to reduce the risks their platforms pose to users, and would have imposed on them a duty to protect children.

It also would have introduced a 24-hour takedown provision for content that sexually victimizes a child, and would have created a digital safety commission to administer and enforce the legislation.

Australia became the first country to implement a social media ban for kids under 16 in December, and Spain said Tuesday it will implement a similar ban. The British government has launched a consultation on a potential ban for kids under 16 and France is in the process of passing a bill that would ban social media for kids under 15.

In a series of meetings, the heritage committee has heard from experts and advocates warning that children face the threat of sexual exploitation online and their time is increasingly being shaped by influencers and algorithms that determine what content they see.

Aengus Bridgman, director of the Media Ecosystem Observatory, told the committee a large majority of youth typically get their news from influencers.

“They’re getting their news, their political information and their entertainment content. That is the source of their political and social life,” Bridgman said.

The way they’re consuming that content is based on the platform’s algorithms, not an intentional choice, he said.

“The primary way in which influencers reach new listeners, new adherents, is through the recommendation algorithm,” Bridgman said.

Previously, people would choose a newspaper to reach, a TV channel to watch, or people to talk to, but for today’s youth, “the platform is the choice,” he added.

Fenwick McKelvey, an associate professor of communication studies at Concordia University, told the committee that “many of our students can better identify with influencers than with journalists as a career choice.”

In some cases, those influencers can be a source of harms such as cyberbullying and disinformation, he said.

Wanda Polzin Holman is chief executive officer at Little Warriors, a child sexual abuse-focused charity. She said sextortion, online grooming and child luring happens in plain sight “and in very subtle ways through gaming platforms and social media, which parents and educators may not always be apprised of.”

She said there has been an 80 per cent increase in reported sextortion cases since 2020, and “victim demographics are most often youth aged 12 to 17.”

Stacy Hanson, a high school counsellor in Saskatoon, said she and her colleagues have a litany of concerns — including online harassment that goes beyond traditional bullying, students building relationships with AI chatbots, influencers that have “normalized misogynistic attitudes among some male students,” sexual exploitation and sextortion, and harmful content that promotes behaviours like self-harm, suicide and disordered eating.

Hanson gave the example of a 15-year-old who “gained more than half a million followers on a Chinese version of TikTok, and then was targeted by adults posing as executives from an adult content site.”

“They coached her to send sexualized videos and profit-shared with her. She earned thousands per month without her family knowing,” Hanson said.

André Côté, executive director of The Dais, a think tank housed at Toronto Metropolitan University, said students, parents, teachers and school boards are calling on policy-makers to take action.

“This is out of their control. They need governments to step in,” he said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Feb. 3, 2026.

Anja Karadeglija, The Canadian Press