Canada is the next big country to try carding the internet, after the UK, Australia, France and of course, the United States. Ottawa introduced Bill C-34, aka “the Safe Social Media Act,” on June 10, setting a minimum age of 16 to register or hold a social media account. The bill also requires any regulated service that provides access to adult content to verify that users are over 18, according to the government website’s description.
ID Checks vs. Privacy Concerns
While the verification method is still unsettled, Culture Minister Marc Miller said it’s being worked out, telling The Canadian Press that the government is having “a back and forth with platforms as to what protects people’s privacy and what is adequate and sufficient in the circumstances.”
Reported methods under discussion include face-scanning software that estimates your age, government-issued digital ID, credit cards, bank checks, mobile network accounts and app-store level checks— though there has been disagreement about what is actually reliable. Australia’s under-16 ban actually took effect in 2025 and roughly 70% of kids still had accounts afterwards, according to reports.
Unreliable Age Verification Methods
“Age verification technology is “far from foolproof,” Wouter Lueks of the CISPA Helmholtz Center, told The Canadian Press in the story. Personal information collected for an age check must be destroyed once the check is done, but if unreliability is a factor is choosing a system, concerns about identity theft must also be a part of the conversation.
A new Digital Safety Commission of Canada would enforce the Act with penalties reaching $20 million or 5% of a company’s global revenue for the previous year. But overall, Bill C-34 “is light on details,” as Emily Laidlaw of the University of Calgary, tells The Canadian Press.
Canadians Must Wait and See
Unsettled verification methods are an issue particularly pertinent to adult websites, which usually deal with heavier penalties and less political sympathy. Every country that decides to card children ends up carding adults, and adult sites are always the test case. Canada has not worked out how any of it will actually run, so the industry and Canadian web users must both wait and see what happens.
While media focus has highlighted teens and social media in general, the 18+ porn provision and penalty concerns are sure to grow as Canada solidifies its guidelines. A great legal analysis of the law can be read at Canadian Privacy Law Blog.
