Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced on April 26 that his province is going to ban social media, including AI chatbots, for all youth under age 16. Kinew is the first premier in Canada to move in this direction, but not the first jurisdiction to do so. And it is a good start.
Australia has already banned this for youth under 16, requiring tech companies to have better age verification and restrictions. More than 10 countries are looking at this type of ban.
There is science to back this up. Some tech companies developed social media apps and platforms to allow for infinite scrolling, which triggers the release of dopamine, in a way that can be very addictive. For adults, this is distracting enough, for children whose brains are still developing, the effects of this one thing alone are difficult. But it is not just one thing.
Social media, especially for children, has seen a skyrocketing number of issues of harassment, bullying, and sexual exploitation.
For those who went to school in the pre-social media days, bullying meant the physical or verbal abuse was limited to the social interactions you had in and around the school. In the social media era, there is no escape for youth who are being targeted. The bullying follows those targeted to their safe spaces.
Adding AI chatbots is a good extension of the social media ban. Just last week, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman apologized for his system not alerting the authorities to conversations between its chatbot and a teen in Tumber Ridge, B.C. That teen went on to kill eight people in that community, two adults and six children.
The failure of OpenAI to alert the authorities may have prevented that tragedy, we will never know. But, what we do know is that, on several occasions, these large language model programs tend to reflect and reinforce the conversation being had with them. Again, for many adults this is something that experience and reason can help counter. For children without that experience or developed reasoning, it is harmful.
Removing AI and social media from those under 16 is not a perfect solution. It would be incumbent on companies to maintain compliance, and there should be severe penalties for companies found not following the ban.
I usually dislike using the word ban, but it is fitting in this case. We ban youth under age 19 in Ontario from buying or consuming alcohol. Youth under age 16 are prohibited from driving. You have the rights to those things when you have reached an age where society and reasonable legislation have said you should be of reasonable judgment to exercise those rights.
Banning the use of social media platforms for those children under age 16 is not limiting free speech either. People have the right to free speech — that does not give everyone a newspaper to write a column in, or a radio station to talk over the airwaves to. Social media should face the same responsibility test as other mediums.
Critics say that a ban like this will not work because some will find a way around it. Some teens underage drink, and some smoke weed. For those there are consequences, while the protection for the majority remains.
I would like to see all social media go away for good. There is little benefit from it. That is unreasonable for some. A youth ban is a good start.
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