Western Standard - December 05, 2025


Get kids off their phones!

Guests
Robin Shirk
Mentioned
Gilbo Nigel Hannaford Charlie Kirk Bill C-63 Bobo
‘Professionally incapacitated’： John Rustad voted out CORY MORGAN SHOW： Quit pretending we need indigenous consent!

Episode Stats


Length

24 minutes

Words per minute

168.85

Word count

4,108

Sentence count

103

Harmful content

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

One of the clichés of our age is the teenager focused on their cell phone to the exclusion of all else, including friends and family. How often does mom s phone do double duty as a babysitter? This can t be good, and there are people trying to do something about it. Joining me today is Robin Shirk, a volunteer mom with Unplugged Canada, a movement helping families prevent digital harm by delaying smartphones and supporting a social media age minimum.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 Good evening, Western Standard viewers, and welcome to Hannaford, a weekly politics show
00:00:22.000 of the Western Standard. It is Thursday, December the 4th. One of the clichés of our age is the
00:00:28.380 teenager focused on their cell phone to the exclusion of all else, including friends and
00:00:33.220 family. In fact, much of the time, they're not even teenagers. How often does mom's phone do
00:00:39.600 double duty as a babysitter? This can't be good, and there are people trying to do something about
00:00:46.460 it. Joining me today is Robin Shirk. She's a volunteer mom with Unplugged Canada, a movement
00:00:52.640 helping families prevent digital harm by delaying smartphones and supporting a social media age
00:00:59.880 minimum. Welcome to the show, Robin. Thanks for having me. Oh, you're glad to have you here.
00:01:07.080 It's a bit of an issue, isn't it? Robin, how bad can this be? When the kids are wrapped up in their
00:01:12.720 phones, they're not up to mischief anywhere else and turning over garbage cans in the back alleys.
00:01:18.080 so why do we care what's unplugged canada and what is it that you are trying to accomplish
00:01:23.000 yeah so broadly unplugged canada it's a movement of parents across the country
00:01:28.660 that are really focused on preventing digital harm in children we're doing that through local
00:01:35.100 support and helping parents delay giving their kids a smartphone if they choose to
00:01:40.600 and also with national advocacy asking for canada to have a social media age minimum
00:01:47.320 And all this is about protecting childhood and helping kids have a healthy age-appropriate
00:01:54.280 development. Now look, every age has its own difficult things, right? And you know, when I
00:02:02.680 was 10 years old, I was always in a book. And so I'd get this disembodied voice coming from
00:02:10.920 somewhere else in the house, get out of the book and come and feel potatoes or go make your bed
00:02:16.200 or something like that you know so in 70 years ago it was books today it's a smartphone has anything
00:02:23.880 really changed yeah i think i would first of all it separates smartphone from social media because
00:02:30.360 there can be um you know there's differences there and so if i was thinking about the kids
00:02:36.280 interaction reading books or watching tv versus being on on social media those are just fundamentally
00:02:42.520 different you know we didn't know what we released but when you look at social media now with the
00:02:47.560 social comparisons and the you know the predator outreach and the manipulation through the
00:02:53.640 algorithms it really is creating this compulsive use and these mental health harms that have become
00:03:00.120 quite clear and just did not you know you did not see that happen when kids spent hours reading
00:03:05.560 books or watching television for instance so we are seeing that this does feel quite different
00:03:10.840 do you have a you know an example of somebody's family where things went spectacularly wrong and
00:03:19.240 it was the smartphone that ultimately proved to be the problem yeah i i think the hard thing is is
00:03:25.900 there's so many examples it's hard to pick just one when you think of you know teenage girls in
00:03:32.080 canada today 12 of all teenage girls show signs of addiction it's things like withdrawal loss of
00:03:38.120 control um so i think that's what we found is now this is let me stop you there when you're saying
00:03:43.560 they're showing signs of addiction are you saying that they're addicted to their phones or that the
00:03:49.020 phones make them addicted to something else drugs whatever um so addicted to the social media app
00:03:54.820 itself so when you think about what social media is it's it's designed to create this compulsive
00:04:00.480 use to maximize your engagement as they might call it and and we see that a third of teenage
00:04:06.220 girls today you know 31 spend more than five hours a day on social media so what about teenage boys
00:04:12.460 are they part of the problem too me so teenage boys are impacted they're impacted slightly
00:04:17.580 differently so they do show those compulsive rates so it's it's um i believe it's about one
00:04:22.780 in five overall uh for teenagers have that compulsive use um but for teenage boys some
00:04:28.860 of the harms are a bit different as well they're they're more likely to be exposed to excessively
00:04:33.420 violent content for instance um and groomed into you know some of those violent ideologies so it's
00:04:40.060 it's you know the harms are a little bit different between boys and girls but they're both harmful
00:04:45.660 so is this something that people grow out of you know one thing that we've seen is when you
00:04:52.460 have harms like mental health um challenges like depression or anxiety is those can carry with you
00:04:58.460 those can linger. Same things if you see really explicit content that's terrifying to you or
00:05:04.460 disturbing. That lingers. Once you see that, you cannot unsee that. So in that way, I would say it
00:05:10.140 lingers. Yes, you can't unsee the death of Charlie Kirk, can you? And I understand that's something
00:05:17.180 a lot of kids go looking for, which is a frightening thought in its way. All right, so the kids have
00:05:25.180 the phones why does anybody give a 10 year old a smartphone yeah i think you know there's there's
00:05:36.220 smartphones and there's some of the harmful content that can come through unfettered access
00:05:40.380 to the internet so if someone's going to give their their child a phone i understand you want
00:05:44.940 to be able to message them maybe that you want them to be able to have a mac to know where they're
00:05:49.340 going and there's certain circumstances where you might need it for medical reasons as well
00:05:54.620 and and that's very understandable i you know we are seeing new types of phones come onto the market
00:06:00.460 that don't have that unfettered access to the internet but do let kids have access to the
00:06:04.860 services they need so for instance wise phone is one example or pinwheel for instance so i think
00:06:11.580 it's reasonable for kids to want to be connected to their parents or to each other but it's this
00:06:16.380 unfettered unsupervised access to these age inappropriate platforms in the internet is
00:06:21.980 really where we're focused well of course you're always going to have a child who has the phone for
00:06:28.540 the kind of valid reasons you've just talked about but then in any group of a dozen kids
00:06:34.700 there's probably one whose parents see things differently and they can wander the internet at
00:06:40.220 will and you see this little cluster of children gathered around the one who's actually got the
00:06:44.620 phone and they're all looking at something that that intrigues and interests all of them and not
00:06:49.900 necessarily in a good way so is it enough to get parents to like how do you how how does your
00:06:59.820 organization see extending this so that scenario doesn't occur yeah so we recognize this is a
00:07:07.260 complex uh challenge that requires a lot of angles so whether that's education um in schools or just
00:07:14.460 in the home to be aware of the risks and the types of harms that can occur whether it's parent
00:07:20.700 involvement in community support helping parents group together and say you know we'd like to delay
00:07:25.660 giving our child this device until you know they're of the right age but that's also why
00:07:30.540 we're focused on the national advocacy as well because there's some things that you know just
00:07:35.340 are not age appropriate for children just as you agree children shouldn't be going to nightclubs
00:07:39.900 or driving or or gambling in casinos there's some interactions online where the compulsive
00:07:45.980 use design the harms and the risks just you know warrant the same level of youth protections
00:07:51.740 and i would put social media in that category so that's that's why we're advocating for that
00:07:58.060 some of these i'll call it national age minimums alongside the local community involvement and
00:08:03.500 education awareness sorry the national internodes did you say what oh national advocacy so we're
00:08:11.260 okay we're we're asking for canada to have a social media age minimum um keep up with you
00:08:16.700 know proposals that are um you know like the bipartisan senate bill in the us right now or the
00:08:21.420 suggestions for the eu uh to have an eu-wide minimum so you see our what what age would you
00:08:27.500 said that if somebody said yep that's the answer you're onto a good thing we're gonna say it should
00:08:33.900 be at this age what what would you recommend as the age when child should be allowed to
00:08:40.380 get onto the internet and wander wherever they will yeah so i think it's it's really all about
00:08:45.420 developmental readiness and what the what the research is showing right now is for social media
00:08:51.100 specifically um girls are most vulnerable to harm around the ages of 11 to 13 whereas boys are most
00:08:57.260 vulnerable between ages of 13 to 15. So that's why you're seeing countries internationally set
00:09:02.140 that age at 16. And that's why we would recommend 16 as well, is to make sure you're kind of past
00:09:08.140 those most vulnerable years before having these interactions. I hate to be a naysayer, but,
00:09:15.980 and actually I'm not, I wish you all the luck in the world, but do you think that it is going to
00:09:22.300 fly i mean there are going to be some people that there's obviously an organization that you're
00:09:27.520 working with uh and i'm going to ask you about that organization in just a moment but um in any
00:09:34.220 group of a hundred parents you know that there are going to be some who say yep we've got to keep the
00:09:39.540 phones out of the hands of the children and then there'll be others who for whatever reason and it
00:09:45.140 may well be that they don't want the fight uh it may be nothing more than that but they're not going
00:09:51.060 go with you and then you've got some who are on and some who are off and here's a whole new source
00:09:55.620 of teenage tension what do you think what are your chances i think well i would separate the
00:10:02.340 the having a phone versus a social media age minimum for having a phone you know i'd support
00:10:07.220 every family and where they're at and i recognize there's different circumstances there so you're
00:10:12.260 right you're never going to have consensus on how families want to approach that they should
00:10:16.580 have differences um now for a national age minimum for social media that actually has widespread
00:10:23.460 support you know ipsos uh you know a polling firm actually surveyed 30 countries around the world
00:10:29.940 including canada and they found the majority of people in every country they surveyed supported
00:10:35.940 an age minimum and government enforced strong age minimum and among parents you know that support
00:10:41.460 it was three and four it was the majority and uh you used to use one of the buzzwords that
00:10:46.980 gets us alarmed and that is government enforcement yeah what what do you think the government
00:10:53.940 could or should do about this you know just like how we don't let kids buy cigarettes or buy
00:11:01.700 alcohol or gambling casinos it's the same way it's putting the responsibility on the platform
00:11:07.460 to have some sort of age assurance.
00:11:11.160 And to be clear, that does not require a government ID.
00:11:15.560 If you look at what they did in the UK
00:11:17.860 when they implemented age enforcement
00:11:20.840 for going to explicit sites like pornography sites,
00:11:24.360 there they found there's multiple ways
00:11:25.760 you could verify someone is of age
00:11:28.000 without needing a government ID.
00:11:30.260 For example, using a $0 charge on a credit card
00:11:33.680 or sharing an email.
00:11:35.440 and if that email address has existed for so long you know that digital footprint means that person
00:11:40.400 is obviously of age so there's multiple ways to do this that are very privacy preserving
00:11:46.800 and i think the owner should be on the platform it's not on the person and and what i'd say is
00:11:52.240 it was just this past summer that canada itself launched a new national um standard for age
00:11:57.760 assurance technology so we have the framework in place now in a way that we just didn't a couple
00:12:02.080 of years ago. So we have the guardrails, we have the design, and we've seen it rolled out in other
00:12:07.760 industries and other countries to know that it can be done safely and effectively without having
00:12:13.520 to share too much information. You were describing a technology that we have
00:12:20.240 that works in other circumstances that can be made to work for vetifying the age of children
00:12:29.040 so that they're not on the internet uh what is that can you describe that again please yeah so
00:12:36.080 it's called it's called age assurance technology and what that means is you know you're not
00:12:41.840 checking a specific id but you have other ways you can validate someone is of age
00:12:47.360 so you know there's multiple ways that can be done you're seeing that um being used in the uk
00:12:52.480 right now for um you know for their explicit sites and the age checks there or in australia
00:12:59.040 for joining a social media account so they explicitly say you do not need to use a government
00:13:03.600 id in order to have your age validated so so the child would be trying to log on to a site and it
00:13:14.080 would just give them a blank screen or you know sorry you're not verified or something like that
00:13:19.360 is that is that what this would look like yeah so it's it would block you at the account setup level
00:13:24.480 so you could see the links from the site but you wouldn't be able to make your own profile
00:13:28.880 and making your own profile that's the reason why that matters is when you have your own profile
00:13:34.080 that's when predators can reach out to you that's when you can have those social comparisons you
00:13:38.240 know tracking tracking the likes all of those things and it also lets the algorithm really
00:13:43.520 collect your data and walk into you and become more addictive because you're sharing so much
00:13:48.640 information it can trace it all back to you so it's it's this idea that you should be um you know
00:13:54.160 of an age to uh consent to sharing all that data and consent to understanding how you're being
00:13:59.360 manipulated before you're put in that circumstance how exactly are children being manipulated what
00:14:05.680 are the levers that get pulled yeah so there's what i'll call content rewards and social rewards
00:14:12.480 so the manipulation on the content front is that's the algorithmic feed uh feeding your
00:14:18.080 content to keep you engaged and the more emotionally charged that content is and the more
00:14:23.440 kind of you know wow attention getting that content is and the more likely you are to stay
00:14:28.480 hooked it's almost like pulling a gambling lever to see um you know slot machine lever to see what
00:14:33.440 what pops up um so that's that's the emotional manipulation there is it can put you in this
00:14:39.520 ultimately is about selling product to children right this is yeah these yeah exactly these are
00:14:46.720 ads are platforms their entire design is to to sell you know to sell advertisements and keep
00:14:52.080 you on there longer to be able to sell more advertisements to you so whether it's um you
00:14:57.200 know manipulating the content to try and hook your emotions and keep you there longer or the social
00:15:02.160 work looking at the number of of likes or followers or comments on on different types of content that
00:15:07.680 you're interested in um all in those notifications as well you know someone telling you to come back
00:15:12.720 in um all of those things are designed to catch and hook your attention and for adults you know
00:15:18.240 that's that's fine we have the impulse controls and the critical thinking skills developed but
00:15:22.800 for young children they haven't developed that yet so it's really preying on some of their
00:15:26.640 their vulnerabilities and um just you know they just haven't had the developmental maturity
00:15:32.160 uh to be able to to handle these situations the way that adults can okay tell me a little bit
00:15:37.680 about your organization how long have you been around and uh what kind of pickup are you getting
00:15:42.160 and then i want to take you to the petition that you're asking people to sign so first what about
00:15:47.440 your organization so unplug canada it was officially formed last year and it was formed
00:15:54.320 by jenny prez out of vancouver and what it is is it's a group of volunteers across the country
00:16:00.880 so we've got chapters from nanaimo to nova scotia and we're focused on preventing digital harm and
00:16:06.640 kids and that's through supporting families in our local communities if if they do choose to
00:16:11.680 want to delay getting their child a smartphone it's to help parents band together and alleviate
00:16:15.920 that peer pressure to have one um until they feel that their kids are of age to be able to handle
00:16:21.040 that um and then the other piece is the national advocacy and this is the piece that is asking the
00:16:28.720 government to put in a social media age minimum of 16 and also have stronger used data privacy
00:16:34.800 rights for under the age of 18. so once they are old enough to be on these platforms these companies
00:16:40.560 are not allowed to monetize and share and sell their data until these kids are old enough to
00:16:45.600 recognize what they're giving away. Now you have already presented a petition
00:16:52.080 to the federal government on this matter. We have. Is there any further possibility for
00:16:59.920 people to engage by signing another one? Absolutely. I think in terms of engaging,
00:17:06.960 I would encourage folks to sign the call to action on unpluggedcanada.com and also the direct
00:17:12.880 participation. Writing a letter to your MP and saying that you would want to have these child 0.98
00:17:18.560 protections put in place. We've been talking with dozens of MPs across the country and I've been to
00:17:25.520 Ottawa three times in the last month back and forth for meetings. So it is gaining incredible
00:17:30.560 momentum, and we're gaining cross-party, multi-party support as well.
00:17:35.680 I notice you got a response to your first petition from Mr. Gilbo. He was one of the
00:17:45.520 liberal ministers. He was one of the liberal ministers. He's resigned now,
00:17:50.320 but there's not a lot of common ground that we find with Mr. Gilbo here at Western Standard.
00:17:57.120 But how did you rate his response to the petition when it received it?
00:18:03.640 You know, I always know that tabling a petition is, that's the start.
00:18:08.840 That's not the finish of this effort.
00:18:11.120 So, yeah, getting the attention of the government is important.
00:18:15.620 And, you know, moving forward with multi-party legislation to prevent harm to children and protect children.
00:18:22.640 I think everyone wants to see that happen.
00:18:25.020 And we certainly do as well.
00:18:26.560 So, you know, his response was a bit broader and it referenced several pieces of legislation.
00:18:31.560 But I want to see action today.
00:18:34.560 I don't want to wait.
00:18:35.560 So that would be, that would be my response is I want to see us move yesterday.
00:18:40.560 So let's see what we can do here.
00:18:42.560 Right.
00:18:43.560 Well, you know, I took a look at his response and it's a very particular concern you have, the keeping younger children off social media.
00:18:55.560 media, he took the opportunity to explain all about Bill C-9, which they couch in terms
00:19:06.000 of protecting children, so it wasn't completely off topic, but it's also a bill that is about
00:19:13.200 to be used, it seems, the reports indicate that, to restrict religious freedom as well.
00:19:20.500 I won't ask you to comment on that specifically, but, you know, how confident do you really feel that
00:19:26.700 Heritage Canada, which is the agency you're addressing, understands what you're talking about
00:19:35.300 as opposed to using you as an excuse to talk about what they want to talk about?
00:19:40.860 Yeah, I think to answer that broadly, I have no interest in watching my kids be held hostage.
00:19:46.580 I want to see legislation to prevent harm and protect my children. And I think we need to focus
00:19:53.540 on elements that have multi-party support that can get passed quickly. And so that's really
00:19:59.720 where I'm emphasizing and that's where I would focus. Yes, you can talk about broader initiatives
00:20:05.200 and broader efforts. And I'm not going to comment on that because where I'm really focused on and
00:20:11.220 where my effort is, is on getting a social media age mineral. And this is a targeted ask. It has
00:20:17.400 multi-party support, and I see no reason to delay it. Have you had any face-to-face discussions with
00:20:24.420 government officials on this yet? Member of Parliament or somebody within Heritage Canada,
00:20:29.840 perhaps? I have. Yeah, I did. I did get to talk quickly with Bobo as well. But I did talk,
00:20:36.120 I have talked with four different ministers' offices so far, and as I mentioned, a couple dozen MPs, and I've met senators as well.
00:20:44.760 So we are seeing a lot of traction and a lot of movement, and I do think we can make this happen, but we just have to show that this is what Canadians want.
00:20:54.440 And we see it in the polling numbers, but emailing your MP to ask for this is really important to show that broad national support.
00:21:01.820 Mm-hmm. Okay. How many, this is the last question. We're almost out of time. I'm sorry. But how many parents have responded so far and actually signed the petition?
00:21:15.840 Yeah. So what I would say is, so the petition was only open for 30 days and it was a paper one. That was always kind of symbolic to get this piece going.
00:21:23.500 So what I would really focus on is the polling numbers.
00:21:27.180 It doesn't matter what poll you look at, the vast majority of Canadians want this.
00:21:32.540 How big is vast? 70 percent? 80 percent?
00:21:35.480 80 percent. So 81 percent said they want to see a government-enforced age minimum for joining social media.
00:21:43.620 And, you know, there's different polls ask different age numbers.
00:21:46.940 There was one that said 84 percent of Canadians agreed that kids should be 16 percent to join.
00:21:53.500 But when you looked at the Quebec Select Committee report, it had 90% agreement in
00:21:58.780 their consultation, including 76% agreement among teenagers.
00:22:04.860 So we see Canadians want this and even teens want this.
00:22:09.580 We're finding a lot of folks join because their peers are on it and they don't want
00:22:12.380 to be excluded, but that doesn't mean they want to be fed all this other stuff and get
00:22:15.900 all this content that can be excluded.
00:22:18.060 That's very interesting because I hear informally from people who have younger children that kids aren't necessarily as into it today as they were even a year ago.
00:22:33.400 Anecdotally, you seem to be saying the same thing.
00:22:37.660 Yeah, I think you're seeing kids are starting to recognize the harms.
00:22:42.100 We saw that when we went out collecting petition signatures for the petition we had.
00:22:48.060 What surprised me the most, it was like the 18, 19, 20-year-olds were the ones that would take the pen out of her hand and just start signing and then start sharing their short stories of what had happened to their friend, what had happened to them, what they had seen.
00:23:01.040 So, yes, I think kids that have been through it and have had experiences realize, you know, maybe you shouldn't be giving that to middle school students.
00:23:10.240 Robin, we are out of time, but I must say that I really find myself in 100% sympathy with the aims of your organization.
00:23:19.620 That's Unplugged Canada.
00:23:21.180 If anybody wants to get in contact with you, how would they do that?
00:23:26.220 Yeah, I would go to Unplugged Canada.
00:23:28.980 You can contact the email there, or it's Robin at UnpluggedCanada.com as well.
00:23:33.540 Using your smartphone, of course.
00:23:35.840 You know, there's a lot of good that comes from these devices.
00:23:39.360 it just has to be an agent it just has to be channeled doesn't it yeah i'm so so with you
00:23:44.080 robin shirk uh volunteer with unplugged canada talking about the trying to take our kids back
00:23:51.520 out of the grip of the of the uh smartphone social media revolution that's taken us over in the last
00:23:58.640 decade robin thank you very much for being with us been a pleasure to have you yeah thanks for
00:24:03.840 having me appreciate it for the western standard i'm nigel hanaford