MONTREAL — In a decision published nearly 30 years ago, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission excoriated R.J. Reynolds for purposefully peddling an addictive and dangerous product—namely, tobacco—to children, in the interests of profit. In 1987, the company introduced ads featuring Joe Camel, a leather-jacketed man-camel with a cigarette dangling from his maw, specifically to attract younger people to its product. 

The campaign was wildly successful, in that the percentage of children who smoked Camel cigarettes soon outnumbered the percentage of adult Camel smokers. It was also, in the FTC’s words, “illegal and should be stopped.”

Quebec’s take on the dangers of screen time and social media is comparatively demure. A report, released last week by a cross-party commission investigating the effects of both on children, only mentions the likes of Meta and TikTok in passing. Yet in calling for a what amounts to a social media ban for children and for strict regulation of online influencers, among dozens of other recommendations, the government commission is saying the Metas and TikToks of the world are purposefully peddling an addictive and dangerous product—namely, social media—to children, in the interests of profit.

Like many societies, Quebec has grappled with how to deal with the prevalence of screens, particularly when in the hands of young people. Unlike most societies, Quebec threw the full weight of government behind the problem. Over the course of 30 working sessions, beginning in 2024, the committee heard from 66 witnesses, and met with more than 500 students from 17 primary and secondary schools across the province. Meta and TikTok both said they would attend, only to renege at the last minute.

The commission also polled over 7,500 Quebecers of all ages, and one result really stuck out: nearly 90 per cent of respondents support restricting social media access for those 14 and under—including 76 per cent of 14-to-17-year-olds themselves. This is a clear reflection of a society that is profoundly worried about what it has become: addled, addicted and constantly bent over a phone.

When it comes to social media and screen time, Charlotte Moore Hepburn compares Big Tech to Big Pharma, not Big Tobacco. The medical director of child health policy at Toronto’s SickKids hospital, Moore Hepburn is a pediatric safety advocate who has pushed for better labelling and prescription of drugs that could be taken by children. She says social media platforms in 2025 are akin to the drug industry of the 1930s.

Back then, Moore Hepburn told me, drug companies had few limits as to what they could foist on consumers. It took a series of what she called “pediatric catastrophes” to awaken the legislative machine and compel the drug industry to prove their wares were safe and effective before going to market. One such catastrophe, the Sulfanilamide Disaster of 1937, killed 105 people, many of them children. Another still, the thalidomide scandal of the 1960s, caused birth defects in thousands of children.

There is ample evidence of the harms of social media on young brains, none more compelling than that from Meta itself, which admitted in leaked documents that it purposefully exposed young users to a barrage of algorithmically-torqued outrage and anxiety-inducing content, often resulting in bullying and body issues. Meanwhile, TikTok viral challenges are killing kids. 

“The introduction of children to the online environment is the single largest unregulated environment in the history of humankind,” Moore Hepburn said, adding that Quebec is one of the few worldwide jurisdictions to suggest such a comprehensive set of guardrails.

By enacting an outright ban on cell phones in primary and secondary schools, the Quebec government has already demonstrated its fondness for guardrails. Other more contentious recommendations from the report, like restricting social media and policing influencers, will be harder to legislate and harder still to enforce. Yet if sound laws need precedent, this is a pretty good one. After all, it took a government to force Joe Camel into retirement and to make drug companies behave. Perhaps the road to sane, responsible social media regulation is being built in Quebec. 

Martin Patriquin is The Logic’s Quebec correspondent. He joined in 2019 after 10 years as Quebec bureau chief for Maclean’s. A National Magazine Award and SABEW winner, he has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Walrus, Vice, BuzzFeed and The Globe and Mail, among others. He is also a panellist on CBC’s “Power & Politics.”