CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Social Media Age Checks For Teens Debate

The provincial government has tabled legislation obliging social media companies to verify that every user in the province is at least sixteen, with substantial fines for platforms that fail to exclude younger children. Few dispute that adolescents’ online lives warrant scrutiny. Far fewer consider an age threshold the appropriate instrument.

Families Minister Denise Arsenault, who introduced the bill, portrays it as long overdue. “Parents have long been told that online safety is their responsibility, then left to compete with corporations employing thousands of engineers to keep children scrolling,” she argues. Conceding that no verification system will be flawless, she maintains that a legal age gives parents something to point to: “Right now, a parent who says no is the only parent saying no.”

Dr. Kevin Osei, a psychologist specializing in adolescent mental health, shares the minister’s alarm but questions her remedy. His research links heavy use to disrupted sleep and heightened anxiety, yet he attributes the damage to features such as endless feeds and streaks, not to a user’s birthday. Shielding a fifteen-year-old entirely while handing a seventeen-year-old “the full machine” strikes him as arbitrary. He grants that a minimum age might buy younger children time, but prefers obliging platforms to disable compulsive features for everyone under eighteen.

Privacy lawyer Farah Haddad identifies a less obvious consequence. “To confirm that someone’s under sixteen, you’ve got to check everyone,” she explains. Adults could be required to upload identification or facial scans to companies with an uneven record of safeguarding data. Haddad favours holding platforms accountable, but believes the wrong target has been chosen: “Regulate what the product does, not who is allowed through the door.”

Tessa Morin, a Grade 11 student who chairs her city’s youth advisory council, doubts the law would keep many classmates offline. Half of them, she estimates, opened their first account with an older sibling’s email address. Though she coordinates food-drive volunteers online, Morin last year deleted a photo-sharing app after noticing she felt worse whenever she opened it. “Nobody taught me that. I stumbled on it by accident,” she remarks. Compulsory digital literacy lessons would, in her estimation, accomplish more than any ban.

As a father of two teenagers, I understand the minister’s impulse; parents really do feel 6. Choose…like David facing Goliathreassured by privacy rulesignored by their teenagersrelieved of responsibility. This bill, however, is the wrong instrument. Ms. Morin is surely right that determined teens will simply 7. Choose…delete apps that upset themborrow their way incoordinate helpers regardlesswrite to officials, and I balk at the notion that I, a grown man, should have to 8. Choose…pay my children’s finesabandon my accountssurrender my IDattend safety classes myself merely to stay in touch with my old hockey teammates.

Dr. Osei makes the stronger case: the trouble lies less in who is online than in 9. Choose…how many hours teenagers sleepmachinery built to hook usershow much data platforms hoardhow often parents say no. My son spent last winter chasing a daily streak, and no birthday rule would have changed that. Fund 10. Choose…studies of teenage reststronger data protectiona youth council everywherelessons in critical scrolling, as Ms. Morin suggests, and I will gladly support the province.