Canadians' Perspectives on Governing AI Chatbots: A Policy Brief

Key Findings

• — More than 70% of respondents are concerned about every surveyed chatbot risk to young people: exposure to misinformation 81%, privacy and data collection 79%, impacts on critical thinking 79%, mental wellbeing and social isolation 78%, learning deficits 75%, emotional dependency 75%, and encouragement of risky behaviour including self-harm 73%.
• — 56% hold AI companies primarily responsible when youth are harmed by chatbots, against 12% parents, 9% youth themselves and 8% government.
• — 67% agree that frequent chatbot interaction negatively interferes with youth emotional and social development and 6% disagree.
• — 69% want stricter regulation of AI chatbots, and 74% to 80% support specific safeguards including age verification, parental oversight, data limits and content restrictions.
• — The brief groups public concern into epistemic risks, social risks (development, emotional regulation, dependence on engagement-oriented design) and structural or data risks, and reads the pattern as concern about design incentives misaligned with youth wellbeing rather than about isolated harms.

Methodology Notes

Online survey fielded 28 November to 7 December 2025 by the Media Ecosystem Observatory, n=1,454 Canadian adults, sampled and weighted by age, gender and province to Statistics Canada population estimates; question wording and the margin of error are not reported in the brief. The brief is dated February 2026 on its cover, the landing page's structured metadata gives 2026-02-03, and the PDF was created 2026-01-29. Opinion data about youth harms from an adult sample; it does not measure young people's own use.

Sources