I am spending time this week in Canada to speak about online safety during a critical juncture for the nation’s digital policy. With pressure mounting to consider a social media ban for youth, Canada is contemplating a regulatory path that my home country of Australia walked down late last year.

Here is what we can all agree on: this conversation is long overdue. Too many children face risks online, platforms have not done enough, and stronger regulation is essential. It is time for parents, teachers, policymakers, and young people to have a serious, unified conversation about keeping children safe.

Banning children from social media is an incredibly seductive idea. But whether bans actually make children safer is a genuinely open question. Experts like myself, who have spent years studying these issues, are expressing serious reservations. We see children circumventing laws, the high costs of enforcement, and the privacy implications of universal age verification. We know that bans don’t make the challenges disappear—they just make children less visible to those who care for them. And when children finally come online at 16, they may enter spaces that are even worse, because bans let platforms off the hook rather than holding them accountable.

This protectionist approach is also fundamentally misaligned with global consensus. Recent international consultations conducted by UNICEF, gathering experts across academia, regulation, and civil society, delivered a stark warning against this very trajectory. The consensus is clear: regulations must target the specific harmful features of platforms—such as algorithmic recommendations and addictive design—rather than relying on blanket bans of children’s digital engagement.

We must also consider the implications for democracy. At a moment of declining faith in democratic institutions worldwide, it makes little sense to remove children’s primary way of learning about, organizing around, and taking action on the issues they care about—issues like climate change that will disproportionately affect them. Social media enables children to imagine themselves as a global political constituency for the first time in history. That kind of collective imagination is exactly what we need to confront the crises ahead.

As I watch these debates unfold globally, I am struck by a collective failure of imagination. Our instinct is almost entirely about restriction. Driven by a singular narrative to protect the vulnerable child, we forget that children gain immense, life-shaping benefits from the digital world. We keep asking, “How do we lock it down?” without pausing to ask in earnest what kind of digital environment will best serve our children and prepare them for the future.

Keeping children genuinely safe requires an ecosystemic approach. All parts of society must work together, not just to protect children from harm, but to enable them to use technology for individual and collective benefit. Right now, the tech business model is simple and ruthless: maximize reach, grab the child audience as young as possible, and keep them there. That is what drives the addictive features we see today.

Governments have been just as reluctant as platforms to think seriously about what smart regulation looks like. But there are real regulatory alternatives to explore: a statutory duty of care to hold platforms accountable, a children’s privacy code, and evidence-based technical standards that prevent exposure to harmful features.

This brings me to the profound opportunity facing Canadian lawmakers today.

Canada has a chance to be different by introducing “Safety by Design” expectations. This means baking safety features, privacy-by-default, and culturally responsive algorithms into the very DNA of technological products. It means utilizing standardized, transparent reporting processes and proactive AI to detect bad actors, paired with targeted digital literacy education to empower adolescents rather than police them.

Regulation has a massive opportunity to change these incentives and put children’s wellbeing at the heart of how platforms operate. Rather than settling for restrictive frameworks that drive tech companies toward bare-minimum compliance, Canada can choose to be ambitious. By shifting the focus from the blunt instrument of a ban to a cohesive, evidence-based model that mandates Safety by Design, Canada can hold platforms accountable for the architecture they engineer.

In doing so, you will do more than solve a domestic policy challenge—you will establish an international standard. Let us move beyond the illusion of protection and embrace the harder, but far more rewarding, work of collaborating with youth, educators, and industry to build the optimal, enriching digital environments our children deserve.

Amanda Third is co-director of the Young and Resilient Research Centre and Professorial Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, Australia. 

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