Mr. Speaker, I rise today to present a petition signed by people from La Prairie—Atateken and across the country who are concerned about the impact that social media is having on our children.
This petition is part of a national initiative, AgeStandard, that has collected over 17,600 signatures online from parents, some of whom work in the tech industry themselves. This petition reminds us of the documented effects that social media is having on the mental health of our children, whose rates of anxiety and depression have doubled since the creation of these platforms.
I would like to remind the House that these platforms filter and tailor their content using algorithmic recommendations and promote violent and sensationalistic content. Users' feeds are constantly being adjusted based on their interactions and set to autoplay to encourage endless scrolling.
The petition therefore calls on the government to pass legislation that would prevent children under the age of 16 from creating social media accounts. The petitioners want users to have to do more than simply check a box. They want certified third parties that are independent from the platforms to be responsible for verifying users' age based on a common technical standard that respects privacy.
In the spring, our government introduced its own response to this issue. However, I believe that AgeStandard's proposal is in keeping with that discussion and should inform our debates on Bill C-34.