What Bill C-34 Could Mean for Children Under 16 on Social Media

Canada is moving to put new guardrails around social media and AI chatbots, with a clear focus on children’s safety.

On Wednesday, Marc Miller, Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture and Minister responsible for Official Languages, introduced Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act. The bill would create a Digital Safety Act and a new Digital Safety Commission of Canada to oversee regulated services. Its central idea is simple: platforms should not only respond after harm occurs, but also assess, reduce and address risks built into the services they design and operate for users.

The proposed law would apply to social media services, user-uploaded livestreaming services, adult content services and certain AI chatbot services operating in Canada. It would set up three main duties: a Duty to Protect Children, a Duty to Act Responsibly, and a Duty to Make Certain Content Inaccessible.

A major change would be an age restriction preventing children under 16 from having social media accounts. Services could later seek an exemption, but only if the regulator determines they have strong enough safeguards for children.

Important parts of the bill include:

Seven categories of harmful content: The bill targets content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, induces a child to harm themselves, bullies a child, incites violence, foments hatred, involves terrorism or violent extremism, or shares intimate content without consent.
Children-first design requirements: Regulated services would have to use age-appropriate protections, reduce children’s exposure to harmful material and high-risk interactions, and prevent children from accessing pornographic content. These duties would apply to both social media services and AI chatbot services.
Rules for social media platforms: Social media services would need to identify risks, reduce exposure to harmful content, label synthetically generated content, make user guidelines accessible, and offer clear tools for reporting, complaints, blocking and flagging.

Rapid action on severe content: Platforms would have to make inaccessible two especially harmful categories: content that sexually victimizes a child or revictimizes a survivor, and intimate content shared without consent, including sexualized deepfakes.
AI chatbot obligations: Chatbot services would need to reduce the risk of communicating harmful content, be transparent about crisis-reporting thresholds, and mitigate the chance that the chatbot itself engages in harmful behaviour.
Digital Safety Plans: Regulated services would have to publish plans explaining how they identify, assess and address risks. The bill also includes a privacy-preserving process for accredited researchers to access certain platform data.

The Digital Safety Commission of Canada would enforce the law through regulations, guidance, audits, inspections, compliance orders and administrative monetary penalties. It would also handle complaints, support victims of online harms, conduct research and create public education resources.

The release says the bill draws on federal policy work and consultations with victims and survivors, civil society groups, Indigenous partners, experts, industry and Canadians, including an Expert Advisory Group that met from March to May 2026.