The federal government is considering a ban of social media accounts for children under 14, the Globe and Mail reports.This ban would come after the highly publicised social media ban that the Australian government has for all children under 16.This ban has been seen as widely successful, with, according to Australian PM Anthony Albanese, over 4.7 million social media accounts deactivated since the ban came into effect in 2024."Today, we can announce that this is working," said Albanese in a December 2025 press conference.The success of the Australian program seems to have inspired officials in Canada who are looking to replicate the Australian program, but there are concerns about how this ban could be implemented and how effective it could be..In the United Kingdom, a similar ban is being considered, but discussions about methods of implementation of the ban differ from the Australian example.The Australian ban puts the duty to monitor and remove underage accounts on the social media companies themselves, with the companies being fined should underage accounts persist, not children or parents.In some proposals of the UK ban, the duty would be on the child, or parent of the child, to complete a digital ID to verify age before creating a new social media account, setting a dangerous precedent in internet freedom and anonymity..It remains to be seen how this ban would be implemented in Canada, or how effective a ban would even be, as even in Australia some underage accounts continue to remain up.The idea of limiting social media among children is something that seems to be overwhelmingly popular amongst Canadians. This can be seen in a poll conducted by IPSOS, which showed that 84% of Canadians agree that kids should be at least 16 before being able to have social media accounts, as well as 81% who agree that the government "should require a minimum age for social media access." Concrete plans about when a ban could be implemented and what form it would take are still unclear, but support for the proposed ban is obviously there.
