Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Holly Wood. I am the coordinator of research and advocacy for Defend Dignity, a national organization that has been working to end sexual exploitation in Canada since 2010. In 2015, we began offering our survivor support fund to financially aid individuals who have experienced sexual exploitation. We are actively engaged in advocacy with all levels of government, and we educate the public.
For this presentation, I want to speak to three very important points about the effects of influencers and social media content on children and adolescents.
My first point focuses on how we have allowed social media influencers to become unregulated educators to children across Canada. Social media influencers and the content they post teach things like appearance, identity, idealized beauty and values, all without educational training or strict standards and with very limited, if any, oversight. Social media influencers post a variety of content, from makeup to promoting facial filters to adult beauty routines and highly sexualized dances, all things being adopted by and ingrained in children as young as 10 or 12. While this may seem harmless, research indicates that it deeply affects identity development and increases vulnerability, especially to sexual exploitation.
Second, online algorithms have now become, in a sense, parents. With children spending up to seven or eight hours a day online, doomscrolling Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat, they are being shaped by big tech algorithms rather than by parents, teachers and communities. On the surface, algorithms may appear harmless, because they're suggesting content that relates to what a child shows interest in when they are browsing, but under the surface, algorithms are teaching our children values, appearance standards, popularity cues and social norms. Algorithms do not consider age appropriateness, safety or mental health. The algorithm is not our friend, and it certainly cannot replace parents and communities, who are the most valuable for guiding our children through the building blocks of life.
All this said, my final point is that parents need to parent, but governments need to govern. Parents already juggle school schedules, meal prep, sports schedules, child care, mortgage payments, heating bills, dentist appointments and their own mental health. Yes, some families are under huge stress, but even parents who are organized, attentive and doing everything right still can't keep up with big tech. This isn't about effort; it's about reality. No parent can outsmart billion-dollar algorithms designed to pull our kids in and hold their attention. It is unrealistic, and I would even go as far as saying that it is impossible. I hope any parents present in this committee meeting can agree with me on that.
We don't treat any other issue this way. We don't ask parents to personally regulate alcohol or tobacco for minors. We don't expect them to set the voting age or decide when a child can drive. Governments set these rules, because protecting our kids protects all of us. Why would big tech be the one area where we leave parents on their own? The world our children are growing up in is more dangerous and complicated than ever before, and there is no parenting manual that prepares you for that. While I appreciate that the government is invested and supportive of prevention education, we must remove the unfair burden placed on parents to teach their children everything.
Therefore, I argue that governments must be responsible for setting guardrails so parents' best efforts are enough. We need legislation and policy that protect our kids, but we also need legislation and policy that prioritize the importance of parenthood in shaping our children.
I have two suggestions.
First, we need policy and legislation that protect our children. Senate bills like Bill S-209, or any other bills in the House of Commons related to this, are a prime example of what we need. Some countries, for instance Norway and Denmark, have taken stronger steps, setting strict limits on children's access to social media and smart devices until they reach a more appropriate age.
As my colleague Val Caldwell pointed out in our presentation in Saskatchewan last week, children do not need cellphones with cameras. They don't need Instagram or TikTok when they're 10 years old. Yes, parental controls can help, but children are clever. They often find a way around these controls, and parents may not even know how to use them properly. That's why we cannot rely on parents alone. We need laws and regulations that set clear boundaries so all kids get the same protection.
Second, we need our government to incentivize social media influencers so they post age-appropriate, positive content, and we need to remove all content creators who do not, or we need to add age controls to certain apps that require parental permission to access harmful or suggestive content. We need policies that protect kids and policies that support parents in the most important job there is—raising them.
Thank you to all parliamentarians who continue to raise the alarm on issues that deeply affect childhood, and thank you for working so hard to protect it.