British Columbia’s attorney general is urging the social media giant Meta to extend new child protection measures to Canadian children, similar to those being implemented for American children. The company, which runs Facebook and Instagram, is rolling out enhanced safeguards in the U.S. under a major legal settlement, yet has not committed to enforcing them in Canada.
Niki Sharma emphasizes the importance of providing Canadian children with equivalent safety measures, such as age-appropriate content controls, age verification processes, and tools to moderate excessive platform usage. She highlights that the recent developments in the U.S. showcase the feasibility and necessity of introducing stronger protections for children and adolescents.
Sharma stresses the urgency of ensuring that Canadian families do not have to await the outcomes of lawsuits against social media platforms to benefit from the advancements observed in the U.S. settlement. Meta’s recent agreement, which concluded a high-profile trial on teen social media dependency and resolved claims from almost all U.S. states, includes the adoption of various safety features.
These features encompass daily time limits of two hours for both Instagram and Facebook, parental consent requirements to disable these limits, restrictions on app access between midnight and 6 a.m. for teenagers, and the suspension of push notifications during school hours. Meta further pledges to enable teens to deactivate autoplay, hide likes and reactions for teen users by default, and eliminate cosmetic surgery and extreme makeup filters for this demographic.
