Meta and ByteDance will ultimately not participate in the public hearings of the special commission on youth screen time. The two companies confirmed to The Canadian Press on Friday that they were withdrawing.
The cross-party committee has been studying the effects of screens on young people’s health and well-being since last week. Virtually every expert it has heard from so far has urged major platforms to take responsibility.
This is because these companies use “addictive” designs, such as infinite scrolling (infinite scrolling), which aim to create addiction to social networks, which is particularly harmful for young users, French epidemiologist Jonathan Bernard told the commission.
He asserted, like the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) and several other groups, that the issues related to the overuse of screens went well beyond individual responsibility, and that multinationals absolutely had to be better regulated.
On Friday, the communications advisor attached to the special committee, Béatrice Zacharie, confirmed to The Canadian Press that Meta and ByteDance (owner of TikTok) had been “summoned” by the committee, “but they did indeed withdraw subsequently.” For what reasons? “The National Assembly does not comment on the withdrawals of individuals or organizations invited to hearings,” she replied.
The press agency’s request for an interview with the committee chair, CAQ MP Amélie Dionne, also went unanswered.
Reached by phone, a ByteDance spokeswoman declined to explain why the company canceled its hearing before the committee’s members. She did, however, say that ByteDance is committed to submitting a brief by the end of the hearing.
A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger, simply noted that Instagram had just launched “Teenager” accounts, in an effort to make the platform safer for underage users.
The special commission on young people’s screen time has so far been able to hear from around twenty groups, several of which have testified to the harmful effects of screens on young people’s sleep and vision, in particular.
Overuse of screens could also harm children’s cognitive, neurological, language and socio-emotional development, in addition to exposing them to cyberbullying, crime, and creating addictions and other mental health disorders.
School workers have reported attention and behavior problems in their classes, while recognizing certain merits of screens, which can be used for educational purposes and contribute to training the “digital literates” of tomorrow.
Consultations will continue until September 26. The special commission must also tour schools, before submitting its report by May 30, 2025 at the latest.