Youth Safety, Social Media Legislation, and Youth Charter Rights: Why Good Online Safety Legislation Must Balance All Three
Caveat: We want to make something very clear at the beginning of this article. We strongly support reasonable, evidence-based legislation that makes online environments safer for children and teens. We have spent almost three decades educating families about online sexual exploitation, sextortion, cyberbullying, privacy, harmful content, predatory behaviour, manipulative platform design, artificial intelligence, and other legitimate online risks facing young people. However, supporting legislation does not mean that we should automatically support every legislative solution proposed in the name of protecting children.
We believe Canadians should be able to ask two questions at the same time #1 “Will this legislation actually make children safer?” and #2 “Does it respect the rights and freedoms of children, teens, and adults under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms?” Those questions are not in opposition to one another. In fact, good legislation should be able to answer yes to both.
Canada Is Entering an Important Online-Safety Debate. In June 2026, the federal government introduced Bill C-34, the proposed Safe Social Media Act (1). The legislation contains several measures that we believe deserve serious consideration and, in some cases, support. It would place greater responsibility on regulated social media and AI chatbot services to identify and mitigate risks, introduce safety focused design requirements, improve reporting and blocking mechanisms, address certain categories of harmful content, and establish a new Digital Safety Commission of Canada.
This represents an important shift in philosophy. Rather than placing responsibility exclusively on children and parents to protect themselves, Bill C-34 recognizes that the companies designing, operating, and profiting from these environments also have responsibilities. We have advocated for this type of safety by design approach for years.
However, Bill C-34 also proposes something significantly more controversial in our opinion, certain regulated social media services would be required to implement age verification or age estimation measures designed to prevent people under 16 from having accounts, unless a service receives an exemption based on sufficient safeguards, and this is where the conversation becomes more complicated.
Sometimes online safety discussions unintentionally treat children exclusively as people who need protection. Of course children need protection, and we don’t argue this fact. However, children are also rights holders. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms does not suddenly begin applying on someone’s 18th birthday.
Freedom of expression, access to information, privacy, equality, association, and other constitutional interests can potentially become relevant when governments regulate how Canadians participate in digital spaces. This is particularly important because social media is no longer simply where young people watch funny videos or post pictures. Young people use online platforms to communicate with friends, learn, create, participate in communities, discuss political and social issues, access support, explore interests, organize activities, and express themselves. Consequently, restricting access to these environments can involve much more than simply reducing someone’s “screen time.”
But there is an equally important point, that being the Canadian Charter rights are not absolute. Section 1 of the Charter allows governments to place reasonable limits on rights when those limits can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society. That means the constitutional question isn’t simply, “Does this law restrict someone’s rights?” A law can restrict a Charter right and still be constitutional. The deeper question is, “Can the government justify that restriction as reasonable and proportionate?”, and that distinction matters enormously.
YES, Protecting Children Can Justify Restrictions
Canadian courts have already dealt with the tension between protecting children and protecting Charter rights. One famous example is the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision in Irwin Toy Ltd. v. Quebec (2).
The case involved Quebec restrictions on commercial advertising directed at children. The Supreme Court recognized that the law restricted expression protected by section 2(b) of the Charter, but ultimately found the restriction could be justified under section 1.
In other words, protecting children and respecting the Charter are not mutually exclusive. Governments can sometimes restrict rights to protect children. However, governments should be able to demonstrate why the restriction is necessary and proportionate. That principle becomes extremely important when considering online-safety legislation. This something that Canadian legal expert David Fraser spoke about in detail in his latest YouTube video on this specific topic (3)
A Good Objective Doesn’t Automatically Make Every Solution a Good One
Most Canadians would probably agree that protecting children from sexual exploitation, predatory behaviour, cyberbullying, harmful content, and other serious online risks is an important objective, we certainly do. However, agreeing with the objective doesn’t mean that we must automatically agree with every proposed solution. Canadian constitutional law essentially asks government to demonstrate why a restriction is justified.
Among the considerations are whether the objective is sufficiently important, whether the restriction is rationally connected to achieving that objective, whether rights are impaired no more than reasonably necessary, and whether the benefits of the intervention are proportionate to its negative consequences.
This leads to an extremely important question, “Could we achieve much of the same child safety benefit through a less restrictive intervention?” For example, rather than simply preventing a 15 year old from having an account, could government require platforms to:
Fundamentally change what that young person experiences?
Be required to restrict unsolicited adult-to-child messaging?
Make behavioural advertising directed at children be prohibited?
Make children’s accounts be private by default?
Make certain recommendation systems be restricted?
Make location sharing be disabled by default?
Make persuasive design features be limited?
Be required to identify and mitigate foreseeable risks before releasing products to children?
Could stronger reporting, blocking, and moderation systems be required?
Could platforms face meaningful financial consequences when they knowingly fail to address foreseeable harms?
These approaches regulate the architecture creating the risk, rather than focusing primarily on the birthday of the person encountering it.
Interestingly, Bill C-34 already contains several provisions moving in this direction. Regulated services would have duties relating to child protection, responsible design, risk mitigation, harmful content, blocking and flagging tools, and transparency. We believe these parts of the legislation deserve at least as much public discussion as the proposed age gate.
One of the most important issues in this discussion is something that can easily be overlooked. Legislation designed to regulate children’s access to the internet can ultimately affect adults too. Think about the practical problem this creates. If a platform is legally required to prevent people under 16 from having accounts, how does it know who is under 16? Some form of age assurance becomes necessary for all who are now going to access the internet in Canada, not just those under the age of 16.
Bill C-34 specifically contemplates age verification or age estimation measures. The government says these requirements would have to be implemented with privacy protections limiting the collection, use, retention, and disclosure of personal information needed for age assurance. Those privacy protections are important, but the larger policy question remains, “To determine who is a child online, a system may first have to determine something about the age of everyone using it.” Suddenly this isn’t exclusively a children’s issue.
The 15 year old may have to establish that they are under or over a threshold, but so might the 22 year old, the 45 year old, or the 70 year old. This is what we mean when we talk about the potential downstream effects of youth focused legislation.
The Privacy Paradox
Age assurance can potentially involve several technologies, depending upon how regulations and platforms eventually implement it. These could include digital credentials, government issued identification, third party verification, facial age estimation, or other mechanisms, which can create an interesting paradox. In attempting to protect children’s privacy and safety, we need to be careful that we don’t unnecessarily create systems requiring millions of Canadians to provide additional information about themselves.
This doesn’t mean that age assurance is inherently unconstitutional or inherently dangerous. However, it means implementation matters enormously. There is a significant difference between a privacy preserving system that confirms, “This person meets the required age threshold”, and a system that tells a company, “This is Darren Laur, this is his date of birth, this is his identification, and this is what he is accessing.” Wherever technically possible, we believe age assurance systems should establish eligibility rather than identity, that is an important distinction.
Adults Have Rights and Privacy Interests Too
Parents and caregivers should also understand that the Charter discussion doesn’t end once their child turns 16. Adults have freedom of expression, privacy interests, and sometimes adults need anonymity. Consider someone:
Researching domestic violence without wanting their identity attached to that search.
A whistleblower discussing misconduct.
A journalist communicating with a confidential source.
Someone researching a deeply personal health concern.
A Canadian participating in a controversial political discussion.
Someone questioning their sexuality or identity.
A person seeking information about addiction or mental health.
There are many legitimate reasons why Canadians may not want their offline identities connected to everything they do online. We should be cautious about creating an online environment where proving something about ourselves gradually becomes the admission price for participating in ordinary digital spaces.
Today’s Child-Safety Infrastructure Could Become Tomorrow’s General Infrastructure
There is another reason parents and adults should pay attention. Technology built for one regulatory purpose can sometimes become useful for other purposes later. An age-assurance system created today to answer, “Is this person over 16?, could technically become infrastructure capable of answering other eligibility or identity questions in the future.
This does not mean Canada is inevitably moving toward mandatory digital identification for internet access, although some want you to believe they are. We don’t believe fear based speculation helps this discussion. However, it is reasonable to ask what infrastructure legislation encourages companies to build and how that infrastructure could evolve.
Who controls it?
What information is processed?
What is retained?
Can it be repurposed?
What happens if it is breached?
Can people participate anonymously?
What happens when the technology incorrectly estimates someone’s age?
What options exist for people without conventional identification?
Those are legitimate public policy questions.
We Need a “Downstream Effects” Test
We believe Canadian lawmakers should apply what we would describe as a downstream effects test to youth online safety legislation. Don’t simply ask what happens to the child the legislation is designed to protect, but also follow the legislation outward.
What technology must companies build to comply?
What information will they require?
What happens to that information?
Who else will have to interact with the system?
What happens when the system gets someone’s age wrong?
What happens when databases are breached?
What happens to anonymous expression?
What happens to adults?
What happens five or ten years from now?
Most importantly we need to ask, “Could we achieve substantially the same child safety benefit in a way that interferes less with everyone’s privacy and rights?” That’s an important question whether you are 15 or 75.
Questioning Constitutionality Does Not Mean We Oppose Protecting Kids
This brings us to something we feel strongly about. In emotionally charged discussions about youth online safety, those who raise legitimate questions about the constitutionality, proportionality, privacy implications, or effectiveness of proposed legislation can sometimes be characterized as being against protecting children. We have experienced this ourselves here at The White Hatter. Some prominent advocates of age gating legislation have gone even further, suggesting that if you do not support these legislative approaches, you are somehow siding with or supporting Big Tech. We believe this creates a false and unhelpful choice. It should be entirely possible to strongly support greater protections for children and teens online while also insisting that the legislation designed to achieve those protections is evidence based, effective, proportionate, privacy preserving, and consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Wanting legislation to withstand constitutional scrutiny is not a vote against protecting children and teens online, quite the opposite. We believe constitutional scrutiny is an important component of creating legislation that genuinely keeps ALL Canadians safer!
There should be nothing controversial about asking whether a proposed law is evidence based, effective, proportionate, privacy preserving, and consistent with the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Those questions don’t weaken child protection, they strengthen it.
The Charter Isn’t the Enemy of Child Protection
It can be tempting to think of constitutional challenges as lawyers using technical arguments to prevent governments from protecting children, however, that misunderstands what constitutional safeguards are designed to do. The Charter helps establish boundaries around how governments exercise power, even when governments are pursuing legitimate and publicly popular objectives. Those protections belong to everyone:
Children.
Teens.
Parents.
Adults.
Seniors.
People we agree with.
People we disagree with.
Protecting those rights isn’t separate from keeping Canadians safe. Rights themselves can be part of safety. Privacy keeps people safer. Freedom of expression allows people to seek help and share experiences. Access to information can help vulnerable young people understand what they are experiencing. Anonymity can help victims of abuse seek assistance. Equality protections can help prevent laws from disproportionately affecting vulnerable populations. Constitutional safeguards help ensure government power has limits. These are not merely abstract legal principles, they have real world consequences.
Constitutional Scrutiny Can Produce Better Child Safety Legislation
There is also a very practical reason parents and caregivers should want Parliament to get this right before legislation becomes law. Imagine Canada introduces sweeping online safety legislation where government creates an expensive regulatory system, technology companies spend millions implementing it, and parents are told that meaningful protections are finally coming. Then significant portions of the legislation become tied up in constitutional litigation for years or are eventually struck down. Children haven’t necessarily benefited from that outcome, and that is why constitutional analysis should occur during the development of legislation, not simply after it becomes law because of public pressure.
Ask difficult questions now.
Consult constitutional experts now.
Examine privacy implications now.
Study international experiences now.
Consider less restrictive alternatives now.
Require evidence now.
Build safeguards now.
Doing so is not standing in the way of protecting children, it’s trying to build legislation capable of surviving a Charter challenges.
Parents Should Be Able to Hold Two Ideas at Once
We believe parents and caregivers should be able to comfortably say, “I want stronger protections for my child online.” and, “I want those protections implemented in a way that respects the Charter and everyone’s privacy.” There is no contradiction between those statements. In fact, this is exactly the balance we should expect from good legislation. We want legislation that:
Targets genuine harms.
Places meaningful responsibility on technology companies.
Is built with safety-by-design.
Have stronger protections against online sexual exploitation.
Hold tech companies accountable when they knowingly expose young people to foreseeable risks.
Is privacy protected.
Allows children to gradually develop digital independence and resiliency.
Allows adults to maintain reasonable anonymity and freedom online.
Allows legislation grounded in evidence rather than political pressure or public fear.
Is capable of surviving Charter scrutiny.
Is all of these things simultaneously.
Regulate the Architecture, Not Just the Birthday
Ultimately, this is why we believe Canada’s online safety discussion needs to extend beyond the question, “At what age should children be allowed on social media?”, as it moves through the parliamentary approval process. We believe there is a much more important question, “Why are platforms permitted to expose children to foreseeable and preventable risks in the first place?”
If recommendation systems expose vulnerable young people to harmful content, address those systems.
If adults can easily contact children inappropriately, change the messaging architecture.
If children’s information is public by default, change the default.
If persuasive design is deliberately engineered to maximize engagement among children, regulate those practices.
If companies fail to respond appropriately to child sexual exploitation, impose meaningful consequences.
If algorithms create foreseeable risks, require companies to assess and mitigate those risks.
Don’t place the entire responsibility on the child, the parent, or a birthday. Place meaningful responsibility on the architecture and the companies that designed it.
This Is What Balance Looks Like
At The White Hatter, we don’t believe Canadians should have to choose between protecting children and protecting constitutional rights, that’s the wrong choice. Good legislation should protect children while interfering with fundamental rights no more than reasonably necessary. Legislation should:
Recognize that children themselves have rights.
Recognize that teenagers are gradually developing independence and autonomy.
Recognize that legislation aimed at children can create downstream consequences for adults.
Protect privacy.
Preserve reasonable anonymity.
Require evidence that interventions actually reduce harm.
Hold technology companies accountable.
Incorporate independent oversight.
Continually measure effectiveness.
Be capable of changing when evidence shows that something isn’t working.
Be capable of surviving constitutional scrutiny.
Facts, Not Fear Applies to Legislation Too
We have spent years encouraging parents and caregivers not to make technology decisions based exclusively on fear. We believe governments should be held to the same standard. Online harms are real, children can be vulnerable, technology companies should be held accountable, and government has an important role to play. However, fear about what might happen to children should not prevent Canadians from asking difficult questions about how government proposes to protect them.
Questioning legislation isn’t opposing child safety, and questioning whether a restriction is proportionate isn’t siding with technology companies. Asking about privacy isn’t minimizing online harm, and wanting constitutional safeguards isn’t putting adult rights ahead of children. These are all components of responsible public policy.
Perhaps the most important question Canadian parents should therefore be asking isn’t, “Do you support Bill C-34?”, rather, it’s, “How do we create the strongest possible protections for children and teens online while preserving the rights, privacy, freedoms, and security that belong to all Canadians?” That includes:
Our children.
Our teens.
Parents and caregivers. and,
Ultimately, that includes all of us.
Protecting children and protecting the Charter are not competing goals. Done properly, each should strengthen the other.
Digital Food For Thought
The White Hatter
Facts Not Fear, Facts Not Emotions, Enlighten Not Frighten, Know Tech Not No Tech
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