Mr. Speaker, that is my fan club. I cannot control them. I am really sorry.
I want to come back to the idea of social media platforms and the algorithms they use to attract not just young people, but adults as well. We are talking about young people and saying that they are vulnerable, but often adults are too. Let us face it. Sometimes we fall asleep with our phone in our hand after spending too long watching silly videos, although we do also watch intelligent content.
That said, the platforms use these algorithms to get young people addicted to their content. I want to say it again. Sometimes the content is very low quality, completely inane. It is not going to help our young people become doctors or great researchers. I think it is important for this law to be enacted and it is important to hold the platforms accountable.
It is also important for parents to understand their role. Parents have good intentions. I never question parents' good intentions in raising their children, but I do think that parents are quite literally overwhelmed. I can see this. These tools, the social media and the platforms specifically designed for young people, are not necessarily from the parents' generation. They also feel a bit overwhelmed by them. That is also why Parliament needs to step in and tell parents that it is going to create a framework and that everyone is going to play a role. There will be legislation. The representatives of these platforms will be held accountable for the content they host and make accessible to young people. The government needs to hold them accountable for any harmful content that ends up on their platforms. They will need to be accountable for their content. They need to understand that however much money they invest in developing tools to attract young people, they should be investing at least as much, if not more, in protecting their users from this extremely dangerous content.
There is the matter of age. I know that can be a sensitive subject. We have seen what is being done in other places like Australia. We have talked about it. Earlier, I heard my colleagues talking in their speeches about what is being done in Australia. We are also looking at what is being done in Europe. The idea of banning social media is one of the concerns that I raised from the very beginning in the conversations that I had with all of the stakeholders I met with. I told them right away that I disagreed with banning it. I disagree with a ban because when a young person is banned from doing something, it basically turns into forbidden fruit. They will definitely find a way around the restrictions. If members do not believe me, just ask my parents. My parents will tell them that when a young person is banned from doing something, they will find a way to do it anyway. It is true. I am kidding around, but anyone who has teenagers or who remembers being a teenager knows that when teens are banned from doing something, their first reaction is not to quietly accept the decision and agree that they are not allowed to do it. Their first reaction is to find a way to do it anyway, because they feel like going on social media. If we choose to ban young people from using social media, we are just going to end up dealing with the problem of them getting around the ban. We will also lose an opportunity to teach, train, warn and protect them, because we will simply be turning a blind eye and saying that social media has been banned and is no longer a problem. We risk losing control.
That was my position before we began these extensive consultations. I must admit that I still have not reached a definitive conclusion about what solution we should adopt when it comes to restricting or prohibiting access to these platforms. I am much more open-minded today than I was at the outset, largely because I have heard perspectives that I found both compelling and relevant. With respect to a ban, my esteemed colleague from Lethbridge spoke earlier about what Australia did. She rightly pointed out that restricting access to social media for youth under 16 has not been as effective as some had hoped. Many young people have kept their accounts, while others have found ways around the restrictions by using VPNs or providing false information when creating accounts. However, there has still been a significant reduction in the number of young users on these platforms in Australia. My understanding is that the numbers have fallen by 30% or 35%. I do not have the exact figures here, but it is somewhere around there.
This measure was implemented in December 2025. It has not even been in place for a full year, yet the number of people under 16 who are active on social media has dropped by about 35%. Some might say it was not a success, that it failed, but we could also look at it from a different angle and point out that there are now 30% fewer young people online. Maybe they replaced their screen time with something else, like playing outside, participating in activities, reading a book or socializing. Whatever alternative they chose, their time was not spent on social media, because they had no access to it. While it may not have been the resounding success that was hoped for, the minister is no Harry Potter. There is no magic involved. I do not think that we should look on it as a failure. As a measure, it can be adjusted based on the progress or observations made over time. In my opinion, a measure implemented in 2025 that has achieved a 30% success rate should not be dismissed out of hand.
All of this brings me to a conversation that really took me by surprise. I was in my riding last week, and I met some exceptional individuals in a confidential setting. I am sorry, but I cannot discuss the details, regardless of parliamentary privilege. One of those exceptional individuals was a physician, Dr. Caroline Bissonnette-Roy, to whom I extend my regards. She works in the community, specifically at the Centre de pédiatrie sociale en communauté Les Petits bonheurs, a pediatric care centre in Drummondville. As everyone knows, these kinds of centres work miracles. The staff there are fantastic.
In a conversation with this doctor, we spoke specifically about young people in vulnerable situations. Obviously, the parents of these young people often do not have much education and do not have a lot of time to devote to this part of their kids' lives. She told me about her day-to-day work, about the children she saw who were psychologically affected by excessive screen time. Often, in certain situations, parents prefer to leave their kids to fend for themselves, for various reasons. I am not judging, obviously. There are all sorts of circumstances, all sorts of contexts. She is seeing this in her own community, in her practice. She is seeing the damage caused by excessive screen time for these kids.
We also discussed the situation in Australia. An article had just been published that discussed the relatively questionable success rate of this measure. She told me she was in favour of a total ban, based on what she was seeing, of course. She sees some very difficult cases. She told me that we should ban social media entirely for anyone under the age of 16 or 18. We need to teach young people to go play outside, as I was saying earlier. We need to teach them to go out, go to the park, play hockey in the street, and do activities just like we used to when we were that age. We managed to get by just fine without cellphones.
She told me that, as far as she was concerned, if we could get children away from screens and social media, that would be a victory, regardless of how many children we save. Whether we save 20%, 30% or 40% of them does not matter. It is going to be a victory because, according to her, we are literally going to save these young people. Their brains will develop normally, without being stunted by excessive screen time and exposure to the kind of content found on TikTok and other platforms that young people use.
I thought that was an interesting perspective. I think we need to take advantage of the minister's open-mindedness and the government's willingness to reach out. Let us hope that this will also be the case when the bill is studied in committee. The government seems to be willing to reach out and listen to various perspectives and perhaps to adjust certain positions that may be too strict according to some or too soft according to others. I think we are going to end up with something that truly measures up to expectations. I feel strange saying this, but the whole world is watching. I said the same thing when we were talking about Bill C‑11, the Online Streaming Act. The whole world was watching us then too. Somebody needed to start regulating online streaming platforms.
So far, not many countries have taken the lead, shown some backbone and decided to legislate on these issues. I think we owe it to our young people to do this. We also need to do it for the benefit of the entire world. That may sound a bit hyperbolic, but I think it is true. Suffice it to say that we need to adopt robust, binding measures for the digital companies that control these algorithms, which we now know are so harmful to the development of our young people. We need to show that we will not back down and that we are going to set up a system that will hold the right people accountable. When I say that, I am not just talking about the platforms. I am also talking about parents, because we need to give them the best tools we can. As legislators, we absolutely must stand up and do something to try to reverse these negative side effects that are literally destroying an entire generation.
I think this is a topic we feel passionately about. We will also be able to discuss video games, which are another place where young people get exposed to all kinds of content through video game chat platforms. We are going to have to address a lot of different issues. I am really looking forward to studying this bill in committee. Bill C-34 is an extremely important bill. It places a heavy responsibility on our shoulders, and we must carry out this work as responsibly as possible.
