Alyssa Hirose
Is Canada’s online porn act a slippery slope for internet freedom?
Illustration by studiostoks / Shutterstock
The Topline
- Canada’s proposed Bill S-209 aims to restrict access to pornographic material for youth under 18
- Critics of the bill claim this could lead to reduced freedoms (and even less privacy) on the internet for Canadians
- Other countries (like the U.K.) have implemented similar controversial laws with debatable levels of success.
Protection matters
Most millennial and Gen Z adults grew up with unregulated, unsupervised, and practically unlimited internet access.
Even if your intentions were as innocent as playing Club Penguin or looking up the lyrics to Avril Lavigne’s “Sk8r Boi,” odds are you came across some kind of sexually explicit content. And whether or not an x-rated claymation of Harry Potter and Hermione scarred you for life (is this a singular experience?), we likely can all agree that children shouldn’t have access to online pornography.
Evidence of porn negatively affecting youth is abundant. Kids who watch porn are more likely to have depression, anxiety, and violent behaviour. It’s also been linked to decreased social integration . Then, there’s the harmful messaging and stigma that sexually explicit content often portrays: youth develop stronger stereotypical gender-based sexual beliefs (like the depersonalization of women) and are more likely to engage in risky sexual behaviours in real life.
Canada’s proposed Bill S-209 aims to “restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material,” and it’s more complex than just hitting a button promising that you are, like, totally over the age of 18. The bill acknowledges that, right now, age verification just doesn’t work, and more effective strategies are needed. Any organization that makes porn accessible to a young person could be fined up to $250,000.
The country is following in the footsteps of the U.K., who implemented the Online Safety Act in 2023. In the U.K., third-party organizations use face-estimation technology or banking verification to determine a user’s age.
Bill S-209 insists that any personal information collected for the purposes of age estimation must be immediately destroyed. And even if these methods aren’t 100 per cent effective (not unlike contraception), they will discourage youth from accessing online porn – needing to enter your banking information will definitely make a teen think twice about hopping on the ‘Hub.
Announcement of the proposed bill has led to some worry about a slippery slope: that censorship of pornography could lead to greater restrictions, potentially messing with our freedoms as Canadians. But Bill S-209 isn’t creating more censorship, it’s censoring more effectively.
Plus, it applies specifically to pornography, unlike its UK counterpart, which applies to “content harmful to children” in general, which could cover everything from porn to bullying to terrorism to dangerous stunt tricks. The Canadian bill is specific enough that a slippery slope against it falls flat – the consequences of exposing kids to sexually explicit content is far greater than any imagined infringement of freedoms.
There is some concern about privacy , but the fact is, our phones have had access to our fingerprints since 2013. Technology can locate where we are at all times. We can pay for groceries instantly because of facial recognition. “Privacy” doesn’t really exist anymore, and if technology can be used to raise a generation of kids that aren’t raised on developmentally devastating porn, we should be DTF with it.
Privacy matters
No one is arguing that children should have access to pornographic material. We want to make that abundantly clear – for the good of the public and just in case there’s some government official surveilling the Google Doc we’re currently typing this in. Hi, Roger. Porn is bad for kids. We know.
The problem isn’t Canada’s Bill S-209’s goals (“to restrict young persons’ online access to pornographic material”); the problem is the methodology. Countries like the U.K. have already implemented similar laws, and the verdict is: there’s no verdict . There’s no proof that the laws actually have impact, and fears around privacy protection are overwhelming.
Some age verification tech involves taking a user’s banking information, creating obvious security risks. Others use facial estimation tools, which essentially use a device’s camera to try and figure out how old you are. This kind of technology isn’t simply off-putting , it can be inaccurate.
There are plenty of 17-year olds who look 25, and, on the reverse side, plenty of baby-faced 25-year-olds who might not enjoy the humiliation ritual of a porn site classifying them as a child.
Oh, also, this kind of face technology has proved to be a lot more accurate for white people (shocker)... so exactly which kids are we protecting?
Bill S-209 could also lead to censorship, as many argue that the U.K.’s Online Safety Act has. We may all agree that violent porn is bad for kids, but “protection” gets more controversial when topics like war, genocide and racism are brought up . Deciding what should be censored and what should be accessible is very fraught.
It’s a slippery slope. The UK Act, which simply covers “content harmful to children,” doesn’t just involve porn: it includes content that promotes suicide, content that “racially or religiously aggravated public order offences” and content that encourages the ingestion of dangerous substances.
The Online Safety Act would effectively put the Cinnamon Challenge of 2013 in the same category as extreme sexual violence. Requiring sensitive information (like your banking info) for access may lead to even more privacy risks. If Bill S-209 passes, there are real concerns that we’d slide right on down to total censorship.
Additionally, there’s the argument that teens who want porn will get it, no matter what restrictions or laws are put in place. Plenty of high-schoolers already know how to use a VPN to get American Netflix, and if videos of naked people are at stake, surely they’d be able to use that same strategy to access explicit content.
Historically, our country’s good intentions to protect us by limiting internet content have backfired . Let’s not blow this again.
