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Ontario Education Minister Paul Calandra says he is looking at a cellphone and social media ban in schools.
Speaking at a news conference Tuesday in southwest Ontario, Calandra said most ministers of education across the country are in agreement that it has not been beneficial to allow students to have access to phones and social media in school.
Calandra said the province will be working closely with the federal government on a social media ban for kids under a certain age.
“I think the evidence is becoming more and more clear that cellphone use in our schools, elementary and our secondary schools, anywhere on site, has become a problem,” Calandra said.
He also said he is looking into a near-total ban on cellphones at school with some medical exemptions, saying that he would like Ontario’s rules to go further than what provinces like Manitoba had announced.
Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew’s government recently announced that it plans to ban children from using social media accounts and artificial intelligence chatbots, starting in classrooms.
Other provinces weigh in
British Columbia Attorney General Niki Sharma said Tuesday that the mass shooting at a school in Tumbler Ridge earlier this year gave a tragic example of harms that can come from chatbots, as the shooter had worrisome interactions with ChatGPT ahead of the killings.
Parents all around the world have seen the harms that can emerge from social media too, she said.
“We have [a] rise in eating disorders and anxiety. Clearly, self-regulation is not working. We can’t have these companies that control a lot of the wealth in the world also deciding what’s safe or unsafe for our children and our vulnerable people in our society,” said Sharma.
Kinew said Tuesday that as a first step, Manitoba schools and teachers may be prohibited from using some AI chatbots and sites like YouTube, but he ultimately wants to be able to levy billion-dollar fines for companies who do not comply with a broader set of rules.
In December, Australia became the first country to create a law enforcing age limits on social media accounts, and it introduced fines for companies found non-compliant.
Several other countries in Europe and Asia have since followed suit.
Federal Culture Minister Marc Miller has said the government is seriously considering a similar law.
The federal government is in the best position to enact such a ban, Sharma said Tuesday, but if it does not act in a timely fashion, B.C. is prepared to go it alone, or perhaps participate in an “alliance” among provinces to take action.
Online safety and children’s advocates held a news conference Monday in Ottawa to call on the government to quickly introduce legislation. The event included Carol Todd, whose daughter Amanda died by suicide in 2012 after she was targeted for online sextortion.
She said Amanda’s story “shocked this country. But what should shock us even more is that more than a decade later, children are still being harmed in the same ways, on more powerful platforms with even less protection.”
