The British Columbia government will be moving forward on restricting cellphone use in schools, launching services to remove intimate images from the internet, and holding social media platforms accountable to keep children and young people safe. “Today, kids live with different challenges than they did a generation ago, and they face them all in the palm of their hand,” said BC Premier David Eby in a Friday press release. “While cellphones, the internet and social media help us connect with each other, they also present risks that can harm kids.”Eby called the impact and influence of the internet and social media “so great and the corporations so powerful it can be overwhelming for parents.” That is why the BC government is taking action to protect children from the threats posed by online predators and the impact of social media companies. Studies show frequent cellphone interruption in the classroom, social media platforms with addictive algorithms and predators who seek to exploit young people present significant risks to them. They found children’s mental health and physical safety can suffer because of body image distortion, cyberbullying, intimate images shared without consent, and sextortion. The BC government acknowledged it will work with school districts to ensure all schools have policies in place by the start of the next school year to be able to restrict cellphone use in classrooms. BC Education and Childcare Minister Rachna Singh said having cellphones in the classroom “can be a distraction from the kind of focused learning we want kids to experience at school.” “There also is a time and a place for cellphones, including when they support student accessibility purposes,” said Singh. “By learning in a safe school environment how to use their cellphones responsibly and respectfully, including when to put them away, students will be better able to develop healthy habits around technology and social media use in their everyday lives.”To ensure students have the knowledge and tools they need to stay safe from online predators, it said it will provide more digital literacy training to them.On Monday, it will launch two new services to help people, prevent the distribution of explicit images, and pursue damages from the perpetrators. These services will improve access to justice and offer a clear path to legal action. “Technology can be an extremely useful tool, but when used by bad actors, it can have devastating impacts on people’s lives,” said BC Attorney General Niki Sharma.“That’s why we are providing supports for people, especially young adults, to take down their private images from websites and pursue damages against predators.”In spring 2024, the BC government will introduce legislation to hold social media companies accountable for the harms they have caused the public, to keep children healthy and protect them from other long-term impacts. When it comes to social media companies, it said this legislation would enable it to recover costs caused by harms to children and adults associated with their platforms and algorithms. These actions are part of its larger effort to keep children healthy and safe, which includes expanding youth mental health centres, launching an anti-vaping strategy and expanding school food programs. This ordeal comes after Prince George RCMP asked parents in November to have open, honest conversations with their children about sextortion amid an investigation into a child’s suicide because of it. READ MORE: Prince George RCMP urge parents to talk about sextortion after 12-year-old child’s suicide“We are calling for parents and caregivers to be honest with their youth about the dangers of online activity, especially if they are engaging in chats with people they don’t know in real life,” said Prince George RCMP media relations officer Cpl. Jennifer Cooper. “While not every case of online sextortion will end in tragedy, the consequences of this kind of activity can follow a youth for their entire life, which needs to be something we talk about openly with our kids.”
