{"id":571807,"date":"2026-03-31T00:33:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-31T00:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/571807\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T00:33:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T00:33:12","slug":"support-for-youth-social-media-ban-in-canada-strong-says-angus-reid-poll-winnipeg","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/571807\/","title":{"rendered":"Support for youth social media ban in Canada strong, says Angus Reid poll – Winnipeg"},"content":{"rendered":"

Numbers from a new poll<\/a> by the Angus Reid Institute show strong support for age restrictions on social media, with 75 per cent supporting a full ban on social platforms for youth under 16.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The polling also shows not all platforms are equal: More than 80 per cent of respondents supported TikTok<\/a>, X (formerly Twitter), and Snapchat for people 16 and under, but just 48 per cent supported banning YouTube from the same age group.<\/p>\n

Unplugged Canada is a parent advocacy organization that pushes families to delay smartphone use until at least age 14, and social media use until at least 16. Founder Jenny Perez says apps with a constant scroll of short content are most harmful.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey affect the attention span\u2026 the capacity to concentrate and to perform and\u2026carrying on other activities,\u201d she told Global News.<\/p>\n

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She says youth need to be educated on the risks before using social media.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe would love is to see more digital literacy and more education and preparation, so by the time that they can access these platforms, they are ready, and they use them more as a tool, and indeed, to connect, rather than being disconnected,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Stephen Sutherland with the Canadian Mental Health Association agrees, noting that while there are risks associated with using social media, an outright ban could also be harmful to youth who lack access to supports, particularly in rural or remote areas.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is not meant to disconnect kids,\u201d he said. \u201cLet\u2019s not confuse ourselves with what the chief aim is. And the chief aim is to keep kids safe and to ensure that parents, caregivers, educators have the tools and resources that they can use to help navigate youth to what\u2019s going to be helpful for them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is important to also consider that some of those benefits would be also taken away if we go to that place of banning it all together,\u201d Ottawa psychotherapist Cynthia Schoppmann told Global News.<\/p>\n

Schoppmann says avoiding social media in the digital age can be difficult.<\/p>\n

\u201cDefinitely it remains a challenge, because technology is just so integrated now in our day-to-day lives,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Last year, Australia<\/a> became the first country to ban social media platforms for youth under 16. Other countries have since moved forward with their own legislation, such as France, Denmark, and Indonesia.<\/p>\n

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Last week, two landmark U.S. court cases opened the door for platforms to be held accountable for harms caused. The Angus Reid polling shows most Canadians would support the platforms being held accountable should the law be broken if a social media ban was enacted here.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Numbers from a new poll by the Angus Reid Institute show strong support for age restrictions on social…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":571808,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,1849,180007,2096,84,890,281,44,1942,27660,64,1059,5476],"class_list":["post-571807","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-consumer","tag-data-desk","tag-facebook","tag-health","tag-lifestyle","tag-meta","tag-news","tag-social-media","tag-social-media-ban","tag-tech","tag-tiktok","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571807","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571807"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571807\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/571808"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571807"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571807"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571807"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}