The Nova Scotia Liberals have renewed hope for a youth social media ban.
On Saturday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew announced the province would ban AI chatbots and social media for children.
In the fall, the Liberals tabled a bill to ban apps like Instagram and Facebok for anyone under 16 years old, but it was shot down at Province House.
MLA Iain Rankin says Manitoba announcing a ban shows the issue crosses party lines and is gaining traction across the world.
“We wanted Nova Scotia to take a leadership role. We still can. We can be second to actually commit to eliminating the access point for our youth that we know will help mental health and self-harm,” said Rankin.
He added that there may be challenges enforcing the ban, but there are still ways for children to communicate off social media. He said the goal is to take away an unregulated product “that is stealing the time away for profit from our kids.”
Several ministers previously said in the fall that the bill had good intentions, but a ban would fall under federal responsibility, and the provincial government had banned cellphones in schools as part of their strategy to curb social media usage among children.
Meanwhile, NDP leader Claudia Chender said the devil is in the details.
She said she is a big fan of Premier Kinew, and with three teenagers at home, she knows how addictive social media is and how hard it is to deal with for both parents and children.
Something needs to be done, but she said they have a lot of questions.
“If this requires young people handing over a lot more of their information to tech giants in order to be able to police those ages, there are obviously questions that arise from that,” said Chender.
She said she wonders if this would prevent young folks from marginalized communities from being able to communicate with each other.
If the ban is done well and protects people’s privacy, she said they would support the effort, but they are waiting to see a more detailed plan before getting totally onboard with bringing a similar ban to Nova Scotia.
