Canada introduces digital safety legislation with social media ban for under-16s

The Canadian federal government has introduced digital safety legislation that would ban social media access for children under 16. The bill follows Australia's December 2025 law, which resulted in platforms removing or restricting 4.7 million accounts and preventing creation of over 300,000 new under-16 accounts in its first three months. Major technology companies are already deploying age assurance methods ranging from simple age declarations to more sophisticated estimation technology in preparation for the Canadian measure.

Blanket age restrictions drive contact into unmonitored channels and impose verification burdens on all users, including adults, without addressing the underlying patterns of coercion, escalation and targeting that constitute actual harm. Guardii's approach intercepts grooming, sextortion and abuse at the moment of contact through real-time pattern detection across Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, Roblox and other platforms, flagging hostile approaches before they reach a child and surfacing acute-distress signals to parents, schools or authorities without requiring platform-wide identity verification or categorical exclusion of compliant minors from protected social connection.