What Would Online Safety Look Like If Young People Helped Design It?

Isabella Wen, a University of Toronto student and content creator, examines youth perspectives on Bill C-34's age restrictions for social media. As an OpenMedia Youth Ambassador, they argue the bill inadequately protects young people since Australia's similar law showed minimal usage reduction while profit-driven algorithms persist. Wen emphasizes: "Before we decide who can enter, we should ask what we are requiring platforms to become."

What changes on your sixteenth birthday?

You do not suddenly understand how an algorithm decides what you see. You do not become immune to scams, harassment, or a fabricated intimate image. Yet an age threshold has become a central part of Canada’s proposed answer to keeping young people safe online.

I understand the desire to draw a clear line. The harms are serious, and families deserve more than instructions to manage them alone. However, as a young person, I want to know what kind of internet will be waiting on the other side. 

Will the platforms themselves have changed?

At the Canadian Youth Internet Governance Forum on October 2, I participated in discussions about platform design, information integrity, and the incentives shaping our digital lives. A question stayed with me: how much can safety features accomplish when they are layered onto systems designed to keep us scrolling?

Safety by design can feel like a band-aid on a foundation built for profit by design. Canada’s debate over Bill C-34 is an opportunity to examine that foundation, and young people should help shape the response.

Young people want more control over their online lives

OpenMedia’s 2026 Digital Safety community survey offers a useful starting point. Among 2,520 respondents, including myself, approximately 89% selected greater control over their data and privacy as a measure they wanted in Canada’s approach to online safety, About 83% wanted platforms to disclose how they protect user data, and 74% wanted disclosure of how algorithms work. By comparison, approximately 23% selected age restrictions as an approach Canada should prioritize.

These findings reveal a clear interest among respondents in changing the power users have over their online experiences. As respondent G. Johnson from Alberta put it: 

“Those who profit from these systems are the ones who need to bear the risks and consequences.”

That principle should guide how we assess the proposed Safe Social Media Act.

Bill C-34 would require designated social media services to implement age verification or estimation measures to prevent under-16s from holding accounts, with a pathway for exemptions where platforms demonstrate adequate safeguards for children. It also proposes safer design requirements, transparency obligations, and duties to address harmful content. These are consequential measures that deserve careful consideration.

The government’s explanation of Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act states that “online harms are not only the result of individual behaviour.” It identifies recommendation systems and endless scrolling among the design features that can amplify harm.

That recognition matters. It should carry through to how success of the bill is measured.

If young people lose their accounts while the mechanisms exposing users to harm remain intact, we should question how much safety has been achieved. What happens when they turn 16? What protections exist for those who continue accessing platforms despite the restriction?

An age limit needs evidence behind it

Australia’s experience makes those questions urgent.

A June 2026 observational study published in The BMJ followed adolescents before and approximately three months after Australia’s social media age restrictions took effect. More than 85% of under-16 participants reported using platforms covered by the law at follow-up. The authors found “little evidence… of immediate substantive reductions in reported social media use.”

This is early evidence from a specific sample. It does not settle the law’s longer-term effects or establish whether every form of online harm changed. Even so, it challenges the assumption that an age restriction reliably removes young people from these spaces.

Canada should plan for youth who remain online, including those a restriction is intended to exclude.

We should also scrutinize the systems used to determine age. Bill C-34 includes safeguards requiring information collected for age verification or estimation to be used only for that purpose, protected and destroyed once that check is complete. Those protections, as well as practical questions, are vital. What information will users provide, how will mistakes be corrected, and how will compliance be independently checked?

Young people have a stake in each answer.

I am a youth content creator, aspiring tech policy professional, and Canada’s representative to the TikTok Global Youth Council in which we work on ethical AI and Trust and Safety. For me, online spaces have been places to share opportunities, build a feminist media organization, and meet thousands of activists, while building cultural movements around issues I care about. Those possibilities are part of why I care about making the internet safer.

Young people’s experiences also differ. A queer teenager seeking community, a student in a rural area, and someone experiencing harassment may need different forms of support. Youth are not a monotype.

Safety should be built into the platform

Australia’s eSafety Commissioner articulates a useful principle in its Safety by Design framework: “The burden of safety should never fall solely upon the user”.

Putting that principle into practice means examining how a service works before harm occurs. Can users meaningfully change their recommendations? Are privacy protections easy to understand and enabled by default? Can someone report an intimate image without navigating a confusing process while it continues circulating?

It also means looking beyond whether a safety feature exists.

A reminder to take a break tells us little unless we know whether it helps people leave when they want to. A reporting button tells us little unless reports receive timely, effective responses. Platforms should demonstrate whether their safeguards reduce exposure to harm and give people more control. 

Young people should help define what works

This is where youth participation can make policy stronger.

At the Canadian Youth Internet Governance Forum, I was reminded that young people can contribute to discussions about governance. Accountability, and technology’s incentives. Our role should extend to testing proposed safeguards and questioning the assumptions behind them.

Meaningful participation would bring young people with varied experiences into decisions while those decisions can still change. It would compensate for their work, give them accessible information and explain how their recommendations influenced the outcome.

An invitation to speak is a beginning. Influence requires a process that listens and responds.

As Canada considers Bill C-34, I want us to measure safety through the experiences of the people these policies are meant to protect: whether they encounter less harm, receive help when they need it and have greater control over their digital lives.

Young people deserve protection. We also deserve a role in determining what effective protection looks like.

Before we decide who can enter, we should ask what we are requiring platforms to become.

OpenMedia Note: Bill C-34, the so-called "Safe Social Media Act," bundles real platform accountability through a 'duty of care' with a social media ban enforced by privacy-invasive age verification for every Canadian. We believe Parliament can fix Bill C-34 and build safer online spaces that protect users, privacy, and free expression. Join the debate and tell your MP to fix online platforms, without banning or surveilling users.