Canadian Medical Association Supports Unplugged Canada’s Call to Protect Children and Youth
As the national voice of the medical profession, the Canadian Medical Association (CMA) supports efforts aimed at limiting social media use among children and youth. Every day, physicians see firsthand the harm that social media use can have on developing brains and children’s physical and mental health.
Today, social media addiction is a significant and increasing issue. For example, in Ontario, 78% of students aged 12-18 exceed 3+ hours a day on platforms (CAMH 2024). While social media does provide some benefits for society, children and youth face significant risks and challenges on these unregulated platforms leading to threats and harm to their physical and mental health and safety.
Social media platforms are engineered to encourage compulsive use and emotional polarization. For children and youth, this can lead to a number of severe harms, including but not limited to diminished self-worth, body dysmorphia, and self-harm. Furthermore, digital platforms increasingly function as a digital public space, where children and youth interact, learn, and socialize. However, the largely unregulated nature of these digital environments exposes children and youth to potentially harmful individuals – people they would typically be shielded from in physical, supervised settings. This lack of oversight creates significant risks, including exploitation, manipulation, and exposure to inappropriate content. As a result, the last 15 years has seen a significant rise in the rates of child sexual exploitation, harassment and abuse through social media platforms.
The CMA strongly believes in fostering healthy childhood development and that is why we are supportive of Unplugged Canada’s efforts to raise awareness of online harms and promote the health, safety and well-being of young people across the country.
We believe action is urgent, as millions of young people are exposed to harms and threats to their well-being daily. We urge the federal government to take action to address these harms. We must act now.
