The federal government is likely to face a constitutional challenge to its proposed ban on social media for kids under 16, some experts say.
On Friday, France’s top court struck down that country’s social media ban for kids under 15, saying the ban was too broad and infringed on freedom of expression.
Dalhousie University associate law professor Michael Karanicolas said a Charter challenge to Canada’s law is almost inevitable.
"If we're talking about such a significant intervention in the social media space and in the expressive space, there will be organizations that have the resources and the expertise to take a challenge forward and I think it's very likely that we see litigation around this," he said.
The Liberal government introduced Bill C-34 in June, which still has to make its way through the Parliamentary process before it becomes law. Social media platforms will be able to obtain an exemption if they have put in place sufficient safeguards to protect children.
Canada is among dozens of countries which began looking at social media age restrictions after Australia became the first country to ban kids from social media in December 2025.
Karanicolas said social media is effectively the only avenue young people can make their voice heard on political issues, and denying them access silences them.
"People under 16 may not be able to vote, but they have skin in the game when it comes to the political discourse. They are impacted by political decisions that are being made," he said. "They are the next generation of our leaders. And we want them to be able to engage with the rest of the population on these political questions."
Both Karanicolas and Tamir Israel, director of the privacy, surveillance, and technology program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, brought up the example of Greta Thunberg, who was 15 when she gained international recognition as an environmental activist.
Israel also pointed to LGBTQ youth who find community online.
"It's sometimes the only sense of community that they can find, and the only source of information on some types of things," he said.
Israel said Canada’s Bill C-34 shares many of the same features that led the French court to conclude the French law was overly broad and unconstitutional, both in terms of freedom and expression and privacy.
For instance, both the French law and the Canadian legislation use a broad definition of social media, he said. The bans are also sweeping in the sense that there is no way, for example, to argue that older teenagers should be able to access a site that should remain off-limits to younger teenagers.
"I imagine for something this novel and this categorical, there will be challenges for sure," Israel said.
Karanicolas said the French court "seemed quite focused on the lack of proportionality and the lack of targeting of this legislation, that it applied to all children without a particular risk assessment of their levels of vulnerability and that it applies to all parents regardless of their particular individualized views around social media platforms."
He said in both cases, that kind of broad approach is "typically a significant red flag for Canada's Supreme Court in a lot of decisions that we've seen on parallel issues."
The government has not yet released a Charter statement, a document that identifies potential effects on Charter rights and freedoms, for Bill C-34.
A spokesperson for Culture Minister Marc Miller said in a statement the bill puts more responsibility on social media platforms and AI chatbots by setting minimum obligations "to make their services safer by design for children, while protecting freedom of expression and addressing clearly defined forms of harmful content that pose serious risks to children.”
The Conservative Party has not come out with a position on the proposed ban. Arpan Khanna, the Conservative justice critic, said in an interview that the party is looking at what the bill does to protect children, "but if there is overreach when it comes to people's civil liberties, that is a concern for us."
He said his party would work with the government to propose solutions and find the right balance.
James Turk, director of the Centre for Free Expression at Toronto Metropolitan University, said if the government wants to make the case that a violation of Charter rights is justifiable, "one of the tests is it has to be the least impairing way of doing it. And a broad-brush ban is not the least interfering way of doing it."
He said there are many reasons younger people would need to use the internet, including to stay in touch with friends and find information.
Turk said a ban is "a very broad way to deal with a specific problem. And as such, I don't think it would pass Charter scrutiny."
Picture Courtesy: AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File
