Table of Content
Canada has introduced a sweeping online safety bill that would restrict children under 16 from having accounts on regulated social media services, while also creating new rules for AI chatbots, synthetic content, harmful material and platform design.
Bill C-34, called the Safe Social Media Act, was introduced on June 10, 2026. It would create two new laws: the Digital Safety Act and the Digital Safety Commission of Canada Act. The bill is still at an early parliamentary stage and is not yet law, but it already signals one of Canada’s most ambitious attempts to regulate online platforms around children’s safety.
The headline measure is the proposed under-16 social media restriction. Operators of specified regulated social media services would be required to use age-verification or age-estimation systems to prevent children under 16 from holding accounts, unless a platform receives an exemption by proving it has strong safeguards for young users.
But the bill goes further than a simple age ban. It would impose safety duties on social media platforms, livestreaming services, user-uploaded adult content services and certain AI chatbot services. It would also create a new federal regulator with powers to audit, investigate, issue guidance, order compliance and impose penalties.
That makes the Canadian proposal broader than many age-limit debates. It is not only about keeping younger teens away from certain platforms. It is about changing how platforms design, monitor and manage online risk.
What the under-16 rule would actually do
The proposed law would require regulated social media services to use age checks designed to stop anyone under 16 from opening or keeping an account. The exact services covered would be named later through regulations, meaning the bill does not yet provide a final list of platforms.
That distinction is important. The bill does not automatically ban every website, app or online service for teenagers. It targets specified regulated social media services, and the final scope will depend on rules still to be written.
There is also an exemption path. A platform could apply to the new Digital Safety Commission of Canada for permission to allow under-16 users if it can show that it provides adequate child-safety protections. The standards for those safeguards would also be defined later.
This structure gives the government flexibility, but it also creates uncertainty. Platforms, parents, privacy advocates and digital rights groups will all be watching how the government defines covered services, what age-check tools are accepted and how hard it will be to win an exemption.
Platforms would face new safety duties
Bill C-34 organizes platform obligations around three major duties: protecting children, acting responsibly and making certain harmful content inaccessible in Canada.
The child-protection duty would require regulated services to design safer experiences for young people. That includes reducing exposure to harmful material, limiting high-risk interactions, using age-appropriate safeguards and preventing children from accessing pornographic content.
The duty to act responsibly would require platforms to assess and reduce the risk that users are exposed to harmful content. Social media services would also need accessible user guidelines, blocking and flagging tools, synthetic-content labels and a resource person for user concerns.
The strongest takedown duty applies to two severe categories: child sexual victimization or survivor revictimization content, and non-consensual intimate content, including sexualized deepfakes. The government is treating those categories differently because a single piece of such content can cause serious and lasting harm.
The bill also identifies several types of harmful content, including child sexual exploitation material, non-consensual intimate content, self-harm content involving children, bullying of a child, hate-fomenting content, violence-inciting content and terrorism or violent extremism content.
AI companion bots enter the regulatory frame
One of the most notable parts of the bill is its treatment of AI chatbot services. Canada is not applying the same under-16 account restriction to chatbots, but it is creating a framework for certain AI systems that communicate with users in human-like ways.
The bill defines a regulated chatbot service as an AI system that uses natural language, gives adaptive responses, can simulate a sustained relationship such as friendship, intimacy or therapeutic support, and produces content that is not fully predetermined by its operator.
Those services would need to reduce the risk of communicating harmful content. They would also have to interrupt conversations and direct users toward human crisis-intervention services if a person expresses suicidal intent, self-harm intent or an intent to cause serious harm to others.
The proposal also targets deceptive and manipulative chatbot behavior. Regulated bots would have to reduce the risk of posing as humans, pretending to be licensed professionals such as doctors or lawyers, encouraging unhealthy emotional attachment, promoting social withdrawal or pushing users toward self-harm or violence.
That makes the bill one of the clearer signs that governments are beginning to regulate AI companion systems, not only social networks.
Age checks could become the biggest fight
The bill relies heavily on age-verification and age-estimation measures, which are likely to become one of its most contested elements.
Supporters argue that age checks are necessary if governments want platforms to keep younger children away from social media accounts or pornographic content. The bill also says age-check systems must limit personal data use to verification or estimation, destroy that information after the process is complete and protect it until deletion.
Critics are likely to focus on privacy and practicality. In order to identify users under 16, platforms may need to check the age of many adults as well. That could push services toward ID checks, face scans or other verification tools across large parts of the internet.
Digital rights groups have warned that broad age-verification laws can create new privacy risks, especially if rules are applied to gaming services, community forums, cloud tools or other ordinary online spaces.
A new regulator with real enforcement power
The bill would create the Digital Safety Commission of Canada to oversee the new system. The Commission would be able to enforce compliance, conduct audits, issue orders, process certain complaints, create guidance, develop standards, run research and support public education.
It would also be required to consider freedom of expression, equality rights, privacy rights and the perspectives of Indigenous peoples when developing guidance, codes of conduct and related rules.
The penalties could be significant. Companies that fail to comply could face administrative monetary penalties reaching the greater of C$10 million or 3% of global revenue. More serious offence penalties could go higher in some cases.
Still, the law would not take effect immediately. Officials have suggested the bill could take time to pass, and the new regulator could take many months to become operational after that.
Canada joins a global push to regulate children’s online lives
Canada’s proposal arrives as governments worldwide move to restrict children’s access to social media or impose tougher duties on large platforms. Australia has already moved ahead with an under-16 social media ban, while several other countries are studying or implementing child-safety rules, age checks and platform accountability measures.
Canada’s version is notable because it combines several debates into one bill: social media age limits, harmful-content duties, AI chatbot regulation, synthetic-content labelling, adult-content age checks and a powerful new regulator.
That breadth is both the bill’s strength and its weakness. Supporters see it as a necessary response to cyberbullying, online exploitation, self-harm content, sexualized deepfakes and manipulative platform design. Critics argue that too many crucial details are being left to future regulations, including which platforms are covered and how age checks will work.
The core question is whether Canada can protect children online without creating excessive privacy risks or handing too much power to a new regulator.
Bill C-34 is not yet law, and much of its practical effect will depend on future regulations. But the direction is clear. Canada is moving beyond asking platforms to remove harmful content after the damage is done. It wants online services to be safer by design, and it is extending that demand from social media to the next frontier of AI chatbots.