More than a decade ago, I started using the phrase “anti‑social media” to describe the strange behavioural shift that happens when people move from face‑to‑face conversation into the anonymous expanse of the internet. Revisiting those old posts now — some written as far back as 2011 — it’s striking how little has changed, and how much worse some of the underlying dynamics have become.

In one of the earliest pieces, I quoted Aeschylus: “In war, truth is the first casualty.” I added that “the ability to engage in intellectual civil discourse must rank right up there.” That observation came during the usage‑based billing debates, when Twitter was still relatively new and the idea of strangers hurling insults at one another online still felt novel. I wrote then that “adherence to truth and reasoned thinking is clearly not a prerequisite for publishing on Twitter,” a line that unfortunately reads today as understatement rather than critique.

The pattern was already visible. In 4 degrees of impersonal communications, I described how people speak differently depending on the medium: face‑to‑face, over the phone, in email, and finally on the web — the “fourth degree,” where the audience is global and the record is permanent. Paradoxically, the more public the forum, the less care people seem to take with their words. The anonymity of the medium becomes a shield, and sometimes a weapon.

That theme resurfaced again and again. In 2016, I wrote about being accused on Twitter of being “congenitally incapable of accurately representing ppl’s views,” a comment that arrived not after a heated argument but after a simple observation about a witness evading a question at a CRTC hearing. The exchange was a reminder that, as I put it then, “there are no referees on the field in Twitter; no red flags for unsportsmanlike conduct; no personal fouls.” The miracle of modern communications allows us to follow regulatory hearings from halfway around the world, but it also allows complete strangers to lob insults from behind cartoon avatars.

By 2021, the problem had grown more acute. A promoted tweet linking to a post on Mythbusting Canadian telecom generated thousands of views — and a torrent of replies, many of them anonymous, some of them antisemitic. I noted at the time that a surprising number of the trolls used cat images or Soviet‑era icons, as if the choice of avatar were itself a form of camouflage. “Hiding in their mom’s basement behind the safety of a shield of anonymity,” I wrote, “it seems too easy to spread hate and be downright anti‑social on some social media platforms.”

The behaviour wasn’t new, but the scale was. And the emotional toll was real. I wasn’t offering a solution then, and I’m not sure there is a simple one now. But there was value in naming the problem, in acknowledging that something about the architecture of online discourse encourages people to abandon the norms they would follow in any other setting.

One of the most enduring pieces in this thread is Being a mensch, written in 2018. It wasn’t about telecom or regulation at all. It was about decency — about treating people with respect, whether they are waiters, busboys, flight attendants, or strangers online. I wrote that “we led a generation to believe that the internet meant a democratization of interaction with everyone; some trolls help demonstrate the corollary: while they may have ability to have their message broadcast, people still retain the ability to ignore them.” That remains true, but it also feels insufficient in an era when online abuse has become a defining feature of public discourse.

The 2022 post Purveying hate on the public dime brought the issue into sharper focus. It wasn’t just about anonymous trolls anymore. It was about the real‑world consequences of lax enforcement and the uncomfortable fact that public funds were, in some cases, supporting individuals who had been suspended from platforms for their hateful conduct. The question I asked then — “Should the Government of Canada be funding purveyors of hate?” — feels even more relevant today as governments grapple with online safety legislation and the boundaries of free expression.

Looking back across these posts, a through‑line emerges. The technology has evolved, the platforms have changed, and the stakes have grown, but the core issue remains the same: an erosion of civility in digital spaces. Social media promised connection, democratization, and community. Too often, it has delivered the opposite. As Andy Rutledge wrote in his essay Anti‑social Media — a piece I’ve recommended for years — “much of the social media has become a venue for us to practice our most anti‑social behavior and exercise our basest motivations.” That line has aged remarkably well.

The question I asked in 2011 still lingers: Can we rise above anti‑social behaviour in social media or develop better filters to shut out the noise? Fifteen years later, I’m not sure we’re any closer to an answer. But the need for one has only grown.

What I do know is that the values we teach our kids — decency, respect, menschlichkeit — matter just as much online as they do offline. Perhaps more. The technology will continue to evolve. The platforms will come and go. But the responsibility to act like a mensch, even when no one is watching and even when the audience is global, remains unchanged.

Maybe that’s the real antidote to anti‑social media. Not new rules or new algorithms, but old‑fashioned decency, applied consistently, even in the fourth degree of communication.

Rogers’ recent Screen Break initiative has sparked a broader question that the industry hasn’t really confronted head‑on: what role, if any, should telecom service providers play in digital wellbeing?

It’s not a hypothetical. The data shows that 62% of parents and 55% of youth believe telcos should help address screen‑time challenges. That’s a remarkable shift in public expectation — and one that places the industry at an unexpected crossroads.

Australia and France have recently placed age restrictions on the use of social media by youths. Legislators in other countries, including Canada, are looking at similar age limits. At the same time, scientific studies do not appear to support legislative prohibitions. A recent Australian study published by JAMA Pediatrics found “moderate social media use was associated with the best well-being outcomes, while both no use and highest use were associated with poorer well-being.” Last month, Oxford’s Journal of Public Health published a study that found “There was no evidence that time spent on social media or gaming frequency predicted later internalizing symptoms among girls or boys.”

The Globe and Mail reports that Canadian government officials are considering a ban for kids under 14 years old. The scientific evidence doesn’t support legislative prohibitions. Instead, as my doctor says about most things I find enjoyable, the studies show that moderation is key.

For decades, telcos have provided the plumbing for our digital world: essential, foundational, but largely invisible. Digital wellbeing, by contrast, has traditionally been the domain of platforms, educators, and parents. Yet here we are, with families looking for help.

So what does that actually mean? Is there a case for telco involvement?

• Parents are increasingly frustrated by the fragmented nature of device‑level and app‑level controls. A network‑level solution — simple, centralized, and device‑agnostic — is appealing.
• At the same time, public trust in platforms is eroding. Social media companies are not seen as neutral actors in the wellbeing debate. Telcos, by contrast, are viewed as utilities. That neutrality creates permission space.
• The research indicates that the market wants help from their phone company. When two‑thirds of parents want tools, that’s more than a niche. It seems to be an adjacent product category waiting to be defined.

On the other hand, arguments can be made against telco involvement. Network‑level parental controls raise legitimate questions, such as questions about privacy and network neutrality. What data would need to be collected? Who will decide which apps are “healthy”? How does the industry avoid accusations of privileging or penalizing certain apps? Will this lead to regulatory entanglement? Once telcos step into wellbeing, will regulators and policymakers expect them to enforce standards? Or worse, will regulators and policymakers define those standards?

A pragmatic way forward may be for service providers to avoid becoming the arbiters of digital wellbeing. Instead, look for a suite of tools, such as usage dashboards, time‑of‑day parental controls, and household‑level profiles. These would be for parents to opt into, not rules imposed from above. Connectivity with context.

The industry has an opportunity to support families without becoming moral gatekeepers. It would be a focus on empowerment, not enforcement, developing tools respecting privacy, neutrality, and user choice. Can service providers support parents by providing the tools needed to parent responsibly?

Whether or not the industry wants it, digital wellbeing is becoming part of the telecom conversation. The question now is how to develop the category responsibly.

Regulatory delay — the glacial pace of CRTC decision making — can slow investment in Canadian communications infrastructure.

Communications networks don’t stand still. Years before customers ever run a speed test, capital is committed for fibre placement and activation, towers are built, and spectrum gets deployed. But, while technology is moving at the pace of innovation, regulation often moves at the pace of… well, regulation.

That gap is becoming a problem.

Over the past few years, I’ve written frequently about the tension between policy ambition and the practical realities of building and operating communications infrastructure. Examples include earlier posts on regulatory uncertainty, flip-flops on wholesale access frameworks, and my recent post on the pace of CRTC proceedings which led to the Federal Government needing to provide emergency band-aid support for CPAC.

The communications sector is continually being asked to do more — connect rural communities, harden networks against extreme weather, support AI workloads, expand 5G, and prepare for 6G — all while competition intensifies, driving prices lower. Yet the regulatory machinery that governs the companies making these multi-billion dollar investments continues to grind at a seemingly glacial pace.

This mismatch has consequences.

Regulatory delay directly affects decisions about capital allocation. When approvals, pricing frameworks, or access rules take years to finalize, uncertainty can freeze or slow corporate investment decisions. Capital is mobile; it will flow to jurisdictions where the rules of the game are clear.

We’ve seen this dynamic play out repeatedly, despite the government’s Policy Direction to the CRTC requiring regulation that is efficient, timely, and proportionate:

• Delayed decisions on wholesale access create uncertainty about returns on fibre builds.
• Slow spectrum policy processes leave operators unable to plan long‑term network evolution.
• Protracted consultations on resilience, consumer protections, or competition rules introduce risk premiums into investment models.

In an infrastructure-driven sector needing billions of dollars in annual capital investment, regulatory indecision is effectively a hidden tax on progress.

Our government says it wants more investment, more competition, more innovation. Yet the very processes designed to achieve those goals can inadvertently be undermined through regulatory delay.

Just last week, the CRTC launched a public consultation on developing a methodology for mobile coverage reporting. But as the Globe and Mail reported, the Commission “issued its request for comments nine months after it received the recommendations on which it is now asking for feedback, and three years after François-Philippe Champagne, then minister of innovation, science and industry, issued a policy directive ordering the telecom agency to develop and implement a standardized and robust approach for reporting mobile wireless coverage.”

Another recent example is the CRTC’s multi‑year consultations on network resilience and outage reporting. While the intent is sound — we all want more resilient networks — the process has become sprawling, reactive, and increasingly prescriptive. As I’ve written before, when regulators ask “which measures should be mandatory?” before understanding feasibility or cost, the result is predictable: companies pause, waiting to see what obligations will ultimately be imposed. Unfortunately, the longer the regulator takes to decide, the longer the delay in making investments in resiliency.

It took 5 years from the launch of a consultation (in October 2020), until the CRTC finalized rates (in October 2025) for competitors to attach fibre to telephone company poles. Last Friday, Bell filed an application for a Commission review, saying the CRTC made a number of errors in calculating the “final” rates.

It isn’t just the CRTC. There have been issues with the political nature of spectrum licensing – an issue that led the 2006 Telecom Policy Review Panel to recommend removing the function from ISED and transferring it to a more independent regulatory body (the CRTC). Last summer I wrote about the Court admonishing the Department in handling Mobilicity’s spectrum transfer, and awarding damages in the hundreds of millions of dollars:

At its core, this action is about the transferability of spectrum licenses. But significantly, it is also about the extraordinary and unusual conduct of Government officials with respect to the Mobilicity spectrum licenses in particular.

A week and a half ago, another judicial case found that ISED had been unreasonable in rejecting the transfer of some 700MHz spectrum from Xplore Mobile to TELUS. The decision refers to the Department’s analysis invoking a criterion undisclosed to the applicants, “in preference to the more fact-based and nuanced arguments advanced by Xplore and TELUS.” As such, “ISED’s decision to reject the Licence Transfer Application was therefore unreasonable as well as procedurally unfair.”

Around the world, telecom regulators struggle to keep pace with technological change. The countries that will win the investment race are certain to have one thing in common: regulatory clarity.

Not necessarily deregulation. Not necessarily lighter regulation. Just faster, smarter, more predictable regulation.

Investors are able to price risk. How do they put a price on ambiguity?

Regulatory delay can have a compounding effect: rural builds get pushed out; urban densification slows; new entrants hesitate; equipment procurement cycles slip; and, innovation ecosystems lose momentum. Perhaps most importantly, Canada risks falling behind in the global competition for digital infrastructure — the foundation upon which AI, advanced manufacturing, and the next generation of services will depend.

If Canada wants to attract and retain private capital for communications infrastructure, regulators need to rethink not just what they decide, but how they decide.

Three principles could help:

1. Time‑bound decisions: Set firm timelines — and stick to them (such as US “Shot Clock” regulations). Uncertainty is often more damaging than an unfavourable ruling.
2. Evidence-based decision making: Policy should follow data, not narratives. As I’ve noted before, telecom prices have been falling for years, despite political rhetoric to the contrary.
3. Regulatory humility: Not every problem requires a new rule. Sometimes the best decision is to let the marketplace work.

Communications companies are ready to invest billions of dollars of capital, and have the expertise to deploy technologies that power the digital economy. What is needed is a regulatory and policy environment moving at something closer to the speed of the industry being governed.

In a world where connectivity underpins everything from economic growth to national security, Canada can not afford continued regulatory delay.

The first International Telecommunications Society (ITS) webinar of 2026 is entitled, “How AI Changes Us”. The one-hour webinar will take place February 19 at 9:30am (Eastern).

What happens to the human mind when we begin sharing the world with new kinds of intelligence?

I have been supporting the ITS webinars for a number of years now. These free one-hour sessions present global experts to an audience around the globe for interesting insights and discussion of topical issues. The last session, held in mid-November, looked at “The Productivity Paradox and the Promise of Co-Intelligence”. February’s session will include a conversation discussing “Psychology, Morality, and Meaning in an Age of Intelligent Machines”, bringing psychology to the centre of the AI debate.

The presenters for the February event are two leading psychologists working at the intersection of human behaviour, trust, and artificial intelligence:

• Paul Bloom: Professor of Psychology at the University of Toronto and author of numerous books, among them The Sweet Spot and Against Empathy. Professor Bloom is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost thinkers on moral psychology, meaning, and human motivation.
• Azim Shariff: Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia and Director of the Centre for Applied Moral Psychology. Professor Shariff is a global expert on morality, religion, and the ethics of emerging technologies, including AI.

Why do we trust some machines and fear others? Does AI change what we value and how we find meaning? How will children develop when they grow up with AI tutors and companions? What can moral psychology teach us about human-centric AI and alignment?

The webinar is scheduled for one hour, with 30 minutes dedicated to presentations and 30 minutes to question and answer.

This folks at ITS are saying “How AI Changes Us” is for anyone thinking seriously about AI, ethics, mental health, education, or the future of human flourishing in an age of intelligent machines.

Long time readers will recall that I come from a family of mental health professionals, so the theme of this upcoming webinar resonates with me. I hope to see you online on February 19.

And, please remember that Bell Let’s Talk day is coming up next week, January 21.

Last week, Rogers launched its Screen Break initiative, intended to help Canadian families address excessive screen use among youths.

The Screen Break program was developed subsequent to new research on youth screen time in Canada, surveying more than 1,200 parents and 500 teens and tweens aged 11–17. The research was conducted last October 30 – November 11, using the Angus Reid Forum, an online public opinion community.

The data offers a useful snapshot of how Canadian families are navigating the realities of smartphone use.

The findings will resonate with anyone following debates on digital‑wellbeing. It also identified important questions with respect to expectations placed on telecom service providers.

The most striking gap in the study is perceptual: Most parents see a problem; most youth don’t.

• 96% of parents care about reducing or improving screen use.
• 95% are concerned about excessive screen time.
• Only 37% of youth believe they spend too much time on their phones.

This disconnect isn’t necessarily surprising, but the scale is noteworthy. Parents overwhelmingly believe screen time is harming focus, productivity, sleep, and physical activity for their kids. Youth acknowledge some measure of risks, but nowhere near the same magnitude.

How does this divergence shape household dynamics — and perhaps, public expectations of industry?

Parents are underestimating their kids’ screen time by 90 minutes per day. Rogers’ data shows youth reporting 5 hours and 14 minutes of daily smartphone use, while their parents estimate 3 hours and 44 minutes. That’s an hour and a half blind spot.

For years I have cited Peter Drucker’s principle “you can’t manage what you can’t measure.” How can parents manage their kids’ screen time, when they don’t have an accurate picture of the amount of time in the first place?

And with 89% of youth exceeding a 2‑hour guideline recommended by Canadian health organizations, the gap between parental expectations and experienced reality continues to widen.

The study stops short of claiming causation, but there are consistent correlations between higher screen time and feelings of personal well-being. Youths with 6 or more hours per day report lower overall well‑being, feeling less included or supported in their communities, and being less active physically.

These findings align with broader research: screen time itself isn’t inherently harmful, but excessive use often coexists with other challenges.

A few behavioural patterns stood out from the study. Smartphones account for 49% of all youth screen time — more than laptops, TVs, or tablets. For girls, the study found smartphones represent an even larger share (52%) of total screen time. The study found nearly half (46%) of smartphone use happens in bedrooms, not shared spaces. It’s no wonder parents don’t have a handle on their kids use of devices.

Social media dominates:

• YouTube (22%)
• TikTok (18%)
• Snapchat (15%)
• Instagram (11%)

These patterns are important because location and app mix influence both parental oversight and the nature of the content consumed.

Parents want help; nearly two-thirds (64%) of parents say tools to manage screen time would be helpful. And, subscribers increasingly expect help from their telecom service provider; 62% of parents and 55% of youth believe telecom companies have a role to play in managing screen time.

That’s a significant shift. Historically, responsibility has been placed on platforms (TikTok, YouTube), device manufacturers (Apple, Samsung), or schools. Now, families are looking upstream — to the network layer. This is where the study intersects directly with telecom policy and market strategy, creating both an opportunity and an obligation for service providers.

Implications?

• Telecom service providers are being invited into the digital‑wellbeing conversation. This is not a space the industry has traditionally occupied. The public is signalling openness — even expectation — for telcos to help families manage screen time.
• Network‑level controls may become a competitive differentiator. Parents want solutions that don’t require configuring every device or app. Telcos are uniquely positioned to offer network‑based tools, but must balance functionality with privacy, neutrality, and regulatory considerations.
• Screen time is becoming a public‑health narrative. The correlation between high screen use and lower well‑being will fuel calls for policy interventions. Telcos will need to be prepared for that discussion.
• Transparency matters. The 90‑minute gap between parent estimates and youth reality highlights the need for better reporting tools — and shared understanding within families.

Rogers’ study reinforces what many have suspected: youth screen time is high, parents are worried, and both groups see a role for telecom providers in helping manage it. I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks.

For an industry often criticized for contributing to digital overload, there is an opportunity for telecom service providers to demonstrate leadership — not by moralizing about screen use, but by offering practical, evidence‑based tools that empower families.