"Social media platforms are engineered to addict children. That is not an accident. It is a business model. Governments are right to act, but the action must be evidence-based and the evidence shows that age-based verification is both ineffective (around 70% of Australian young people evade a similar ban) and raises risks of Canadians being forced to share even more information with the corporations we’ve seen can’t be trusted.
We need to go further. The CFP's Digital New Deal would require social media companies to submit their algorithms to government oversight and give every Canadian the unconditional right to opt out of algorithms. The design choices that hook children, including infinite scroll, engagement-maximizing recommendations, and the deliberate removal of friction, must be regulated at the source. The impact of this technology is hard enough to control for adults; we cannot expect parents and children to confront global corporations: this is what government exists to do.
Big Tech has profited from causing harm for long enough. It is time to make them accountable for the damage they have caused. That starts with governments stepping up. The CFP is happy to offer our proposals in support of that goal."
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