Six Clicks
In an online world designed to maximize attention, it takes just a handful of clicks for a kid’s experience to turn from harmless to harmful.
Canada is proposing to change that. We can require tech companies to put kids’ safety ahead of profit. Demand your MP vote for the Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34) today.
Why this matters
This isn’t accidental. It’s because platforms are designed to maximize profit.
Every day, young Canadians are exposed to violence, self-harm, grooming, cyberbullying, and unregulated AI. Technology platforms are designed with features that manipulate kids and push them toward extreme or harmful content in six clicks or less.
- 1 in 3
- Adolescents report unhealthy psychological symptoms from social media usePublic Health Agency of Canada
- 61,446
- Online child sexual exploitation incidents reported by police in Canada, 2014-2022Statistics Canada
- 2-6 clicks
- That’s how quickly a kid can be exposed to harm online.
What can happen in Six Clicks?
A click might feel like a choice, but platforms are designed to capture and purposefully direct the attention of kids. At every step, what matters is keeping them on the platform, often at the expense of their safety.
Across the Six Clicks videos, look closely at the platform design features working in the background: recommendations; autoplay and notifications; unsafe defaults and weak safeguards; and manipulative commercial and AI features. These deliberate design choices shape where children’s experiences end up online.
The videos deal with sensitive topics that some may find distressing. If you or someone you love is struggling, call or text 9-8-8, free, any time. To report online child exploitation, go to Cybertip.ca.
What begins with a notification and an ordinary fashion video quickly becomes a stream of harmful body- and appearance-focused content. Within just a few clicks, the platform leads the child towards a dangerous product they never searched for.
Platform design features at work
Capture attention and pull kids into the app.
Recommended videos, posts, and accounts determine what children can see next. A single click can trigger suggestions that lead to harmful content, misleading ‘advice’, or unregulated products, exposing children to content they never searched for.
Unregulated businesses and embedded advertising can reach kids through comments and content that may not immediately look like an ad.
Uses prompts such as “Last chance to buy” to pressure them to act before they have time to reconsider.
No age verification check at checkout and saved payment information allow kids to easily complete potentially harmful purchases in a single click.
A kid resharing a harmless post about becoming a billionaire quickly changes direction. The platform responds by serving targeted ads and increasingly extreme content. Within just a few more clicks, the child is led to hateful or misogynistic material.
Platform design features at work
Use a kid’s activity to predict what will hold their attention, serving related posts, promotions and accounts that can lead them towards increasingly extreme content they never searched for.
Sometimes, they don’t even need to click. Videos play automatically, taking children straight from one piece of content to the next. Autoplay is designed to hold their attention, and children can be drawn deeper into harmful or distressing content without actively choosing to continue.
Allow harmful creators to speak directly to kids in real time, with less opportunity for the content to be reviewed before they see it.
Can turn one encounter with a harmful creator into ongoing access to their content and community.
A kid opens an AI chatbot designed to remember past conversations and feel like a friend. But as the kid shares increasingly serious feelings, the chatbot validates their harmful thoughts and fails to direct them to the appropriate crisis support.
Platform design features at work
The chatbot uses a name, image and conversational responses to encourage kids to trust it and share personal information.
Allows the chatbot to remember previous conversations, creating the feeling of an ongoing relationship.
The chatbot uses emotionally affirming responses to position itself as uniquely understanding and encourage kids to keep confiding in it.
The chatbot is sycophantic and validates dangerous thoughts instead of safely challenging them or helping to de-escalate the situation.
Allow the conversation to move closer to harm without surfacing crisis resources or trusted human support.
A gaming tutorial video shouldn’t lead to graphic violence. But weak age checks, increasingly violent recommendations and videos that play automatically take a child deeper into harmful material that evades weak safeguards.
Platform design features at work
Rely on kids to self-declare their age.
Use engagement with familiar content, such as gaming videos, to determine what appears on a child’s screen next - even when it becomes more extreme.
Serves another video immediately, drawing kids onward without requiring an active choice.
Can be easily bypassed, allowing graphic material to evade moderation and continue being recommended to kids.
A daily-use reminder pulls a kid back into the app. The platform’s suggested connections feature makes it easy for a stranger to find them and, within only a few clicks, send an unsolicited inappropriate image designed to disappear after it is opened.
Platform design features at work
Use streaks and other prompts to create pressure for the user to return to the app and keep interacting.
Can make kids discoverable to strangers and help unknown adults find and contact them.
Gives an unknown adult direct access to a kid once that connection has been accepted.
Make harmful content easier to conceal from parents, trusted adults and others who could intervene.
Why did we use AI to create these videos?
We used AI-generated children in Six Clicks so that no real child would ever be linked to a story about online harm. The children do not depict or resemble any real child, and they appear only briefly. The harm itself is shown through a child’s experience on screen and how these products are designed. We believe being open about how these videos were made matters as much as what they show.
It also helps us create imagery that simply isn’t available through stock and that would be harmful or inappropriate to recreate. We wouldn’t ask an actor to use a dangerous beauty device, or ask a child to act out a traumatic experience involving exploitation or abuse.
9/10
Canadians believe social media companies and tech platforms should be held accountable for making their services safe for children and youth.
The bill
Take action to protect our kids online
Big Tech is manipulating our kids for profit, but you can help. Right now, we have the opportunity to come together to demand MPs and senators pass the Safe Social Media Act (Bill C-34) to put the well-being of Canadian kids first.
This bill includes
- Duties on tech companies to protect children and act responsibly
- Age-appropriate protection
- Rules for AI chatbots
- Transparency
- A new regulator with enforcement powers
Created in partnership with the Safer Online Spaces Coalition
The Safer Online Spaces Coalition brings together the clinicians who treat the harm, the organizations that protect children from exploitation, the networks that shape child health policy, and the families who have lived the consequences. We call on the Parliament of Canada to quickly pass Bill C-34.
Learn more about us
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