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As countries including Canada move toward social media bans in an attempt to keep youths safe online, tech companies are in a tug of war over who should be the gatekeepers.
Executives from Snapchat and Meta, the owner of Instagram, Facebook and Threads, have argued it should be app stores rather than platforms charged with verifying the ages of users when they try to add a platform to their phones.
Apple and Google, which run the App Store and Play Store respectively, have introduced some age-gating measures but appear to be at odds with social media platforms over whose responsibility those measures should be.
Experts say trying to put the onus on either side is pointless because app store owners, platforms, governments and parents all have to step up to keep kids safe online.
“I don’t think it’s fair for any company to say, ‘We’re just the host, it’s their problem,'” said Kaitlynn Mendes, a sociology professor at Western University and the Canada Research Chair in inequality and gender.
“It’s all of our problem.”
The battle over who should police youth access to platforms has been simmering for years while child safety advocates called for help addressing the evolving harms young people are encountering online.
The tension hit a crest late last year, when Australia banned anyone under the age of 16 from using social media. A study has since suggested 70 per cent of the country’s Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok users under 16 have held onto their accounts despite the crackdown.
The United Kingdom, France, Poland, Indonesia and now Canada are among the countries taking similar action to Australia.
The federal government announced Wednesday that social media companies will eventually have to block access to their platforms to Canadian users under 16 unless they follow unspecified safeguards.
Social media companies largely oppose youth bans, but say if they are implemented then app stores should do the heavy lifting rather than each individual app.
“We’ve advocated for age verification by app stores instead of individual apps — not because we support under-16 bans, but because if this policy exists it needs to have uniform implementation that safeguards privacy and security for users,” Snapchat CEO Evan Spiegel said in an February opinion piece published in the Financial Times.
His sentiments were echoed by Meta, which has been pushing the Canadian government to implement age verification at the app store level since at least last year.
Google doesn’t like that pitch.
Kareem Ghanem, senior director of government affairs and public policy at Google, has framed it as part of a consistent pattern of “advancing policy proposals that demonstrate more interest in shifting responsibility than in taking responsibility.”
“Time and time again, all over the world, you’ve seen them push forward proposals that would have app stores change their practices and do something new without any change by Meta,” he said in November.
Earlier this week, Apple introduced some new features to its child accounts, which can limit access to adult websites and set age-based restrictions for the App Store. Child accounts are required for children under 13 and available for children up to 18.
Apple CEO Tim Cook attributed the move to Australia’s social media ban.
Mendes said that some companies try to weasel out of taking responsibility for administering bans by pointing the finger at others because they’re difficult to enforce.
Kids are “incredibly crafty,” she said. In Australia, she said they’re using technology that obscures their location to maintain accounts, having older siblings or even parents open accounts for them or turning to other apps that aren’t included in bans.
“Kids are way more motivated to find ways to bypass them and then … we end up spending our time policing children, whereas I think that energy is better spent forcing the companies to design products that are safe,” Mendes said.
The difficulty in enforcing bans is why both app stores and platforms have to step up, said Jenna Poste, the national technology impact adviser at Unplugged Canada, a grassroots organization encouraging parents to consider delaying their child’s access to phones and social media.
App stores alone can’t age-gate because kids can still access social media on browsers or non-Google and Apple devices, Poste said. Kids could use a web browser instead, for example.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 11, 2026.
Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press
