Online harms ranked as the number one threat facing children in Canada for the first time since the report began in 2018, according to Raising Canada 2026, the annual state of the nation’s children report released Tuesday by Children First Canada.
The report was produced with PolicyWise for Children & Families, the Hospital for Sick Children and the University of Calgary, with the Canadian Medical Association as a co-presenting partner. Online harms now sit ahead of unintentional and preventable injuries, violence and child abuse, child poverty and food insecurity, and poor mental health on the charity’s list of the top 10 threats to childhood.
The charity points to the scale of online sexual exploitation as its most alarming finding. The Canadian Centre for Child Protection processes more than 100,000 reports of online child sexual abuse every month, the report says, and police-reported incidents of online child sexual exploitation rose 347 per cent between 2014 and 2024. Police recorded 16,905 such incidents in 2024, a rate of 223 per 100,000 children and youth aged 17 and under. Cybertip.ca processed 28,116 reports from the public in 2025, with Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta accounting for the largest volumes.
The report also cites screen use. Canadian adolescents now average seven or more hours a day, roughly four times national guidelines, and only 27 per cent of children and youth meet the recommendation of no more than two hours of recreational screen time.
Sara Austin, founder and chief executive of Children First Canada, said in the release that the harms now reach children well before adolescence. “The harms are no longer confined to teenagers on social media; they are affecting every child, from birth through adolescence, through AI-powered toys and excessive screentime in the early years, to social media, gaming, messaging apps, and AI chatbots,” she said.
Two structural changes to the list have drawn less attention than the top ranking. Infant mortality moved off the top 10 and onto a new watchlist for the first time, after the national rate fell from 4.7 to 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births between 2023 and 2024, though the report cautions that longstanding inequities persist for First Nations, Metis and Inuit families and in northern and remote communities. In the other direction, the report names the Canadian school experience as an emerging threat, its first new school-related entry since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, citing chronic absenteeism, escalating violence and the rapid integration of artificial intelligence into classrooms.
The release is timed to Parliament’s return, and its central ask is that MPs strengthen and pass Bill C-34, the Safe Social Media Act, before year-end. That timeline is the part of the report most exposed to the parliamentary calendar. The bill was introduced on June 10, 2026, and would enact a Digital Safety Act and create a Digital Safety Commission of Canada. It remains at second reading in the House of Commons and has not been referred to committee. To become law by the end of December, it would have to clear second reading, committee study, report stage and third reading in the Commons, then repeat most of that sequence in the Senate, inside a sitting period of roughly three months.
Carol Todd, founder of the Amanda Todd Legacy Society, whose daughter died by suicide in 2012 after being cyberbullied and sexually extorted, said in the release that families are still waiting for action. “Standing on Parliament Hill this year with children, parents and families whose lives have also been changed forever, our message was simple: time is up,” she said.
Children First Canada is also asking Parliament to pass Bill S-212, which would create a national strategy for children and youth, and to increase spending on digital literacy for children, parents and educators. The charity notes that Canada ranks 22nd of 37 high-income countries on UNICEF’s Child Wellbeing Index and 72nd of 194 countries on the 2026 KidsRights Index.
If you or someone you know is in crisis, support is available. The Suicide Crisis Helpline can be reached at 988, and Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868.
