Ontario is considering banning TikTok in public schools, Minister of Education Stephen Lecce says.
Lecce made the comments to reporters during an unrelated news conference in Mississauga Friday morning. It comes one day after the Ford government announced that it would remove the app on all government-issued devices.
The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has also said that it will “follow Ontario’s lead” and make TikTok inaccessible from board devices and within networks.
“That is a decision point that we will communicate on,” Lecce said when asked whether the ban could be extended to schools on Friday. “We obviously share a very profound concern about the privacy impacts for young people.”
A number of governments around the world have already banned TikTok amid concerns that the app's parent company, ByteDance, could give user data to the Chinese government.
Others have also said that they are considering a ban.
Speaking with reporters, Lecce said that he is “seeking counsel” on “further steps” that could be taken to limit or prohibit the use of the app in schools, including potentially blocking it on Wi-Fi networks.
He said that he spoke with senior ministry officials about the matter as recently as Thursday and plans to continue those discussions.
“I am concerned by what is happening in schools with the proliferation of this technology,” he said. “Frankly both for the mental health and physical health of children.”
Prabmeet Singh Sarkaria, the president of the Treasury Board of Ontario, has previously said that the decision to remove TikTok from government devices is “a proactive and precautionary approach to ensuring the protection of government data and networks.
A spokesperson for TikTok, however, has criticized the government for taking an "extreme approach" and blindly following "the baseless trend of blocking TikTok."
