Banning kids from social media sounds protective but delivers almost nothing. Australia's own regulator found 70% of underage users kept access three months after the ban took effect. Worse, enforcing any age restriction means every Canadian must submit ID to foreign third-party services, creating massive privacy risks with no guaranteed payoff. Regulating how platforms operate, not who can log in, is the only approach that actually addresses the harm.

A social media ban does not solve the real problems festering in Canadian society. Kids turn to these platforms because communities are weaker, third spaces are disappearing, families are stretched thin and opportunities are harder to find. Even if age restrictions work, young people will simply migrate elsewhere online. Instead of another headline-grabbing tech crackdown, policymakers should rebuild the social and economic foundations that made social media so necessary in the first place.

Every "protect the kids" bill is just a familiar Trojan horse. Bill C-34 wraps age bans, AI rules and a new digital regulator in moral panic, but the result is always the same: expanded state oversight, ID-based access and broader speech controls. Parents already have tools to manage their kids' online use. Governments simply use children as cover to normalize censorship and digital surveillance.