The most contentious aspect of the government’s Bill C-34 social media ban for under-16s is that millions of Canadians will need mandated age verification to create social media accounts. The bill tacitly acknowledges that this raises privacy concerns, as it includes a mandatory consultation with the Privacy Commissioner and leaves the future Digital Safety Commission to set the necessary standards. But as I wrote in June, the problem is that the government plans to bring the ban into force before the Commission even exists, meaning the age verification will proceed without established standards or the privacy consultation the bill itself requires. The United Kingdom, which is pursuing a similar ban with a spring 2027 start date, has adopted the opposite approach by asking Ofcom, its regulator, to assess what effective age verification would look like before Parliament sets the rules. The resulting report, released this week, is the most candid regulatory account of a social media ban to date. Ofcom identifies four methods capable of establishing whether someone is 16 or over and it finds that each of them requires using photo ID either directly or as the backstop given the ineffectiveness of age estimation for younger users.

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