On January 8th, 2026, the Canadian telecom giant Rogers announced a $50 million investment over five years in a new initiative called Screen Break aimed at helping youth balance phone use with healthy habits. The program is built around four pillars: parental tools, youth programming, research and partnerships, and education and advocacy.
Under the first pillar, parents will receive guidance and access to new tools to better manage their families’ screen time. The second pillar focuses on youth programming through partnerships with organizations such as the YMCA, promoting physical activity as an alternative to excessive screen use.
The initiative also includes a research component, in which Rogers will commission an annual study to track screen usage habits among youth. To this end, it also partnered with The Dais, a Toronto-based public policy and leadership think tank at Toronto Metropolitan University, to encourage healthier digital habits among young people.
Rogers will also bring professional Canadian athletes to classrooms across the country to talk about the value of balancing screen use with active living. “Just like we teach kids to play sports or ride a bike, we need to teach them when to put their phones down and get moving,” said George Springer, player for the Toronto Blue Jays baseball team.
Canadian children aged 11 to 17 spend more than five hours per day on their phones—more than double the two-hour daily limit recommended by the Canadian Paediatric Society.
But why now?
Experts and parents alike have expressed concern about youths’ phone addiction, which has intensified since the COVID-19 pandemic. A 2025 Rogers-commissioned study found that Canadian children aged 11 to 17 spend more than five hours per day on their phones—more than double the two-hour daily limit recommended by the Canadian Paediatric Society.
Excessive screen usage has been linked to a range of troubling health and academic outcomes. Emerging research cited by The Dais connects prolonged screen use to “lower standardized test scores, increased anxiety, depression, aggression, poor sleep, and a higher risk of obesity.” More time spent online also increases exposure to “online harms, including hate speech, violent content, and personal harassment.”
These concerns have sparked global debate over how governments should respond. Several European countries, including France, the Netherlands, and Italy (among others) have decided to completely ban phone usage in schools. Others have gone further. Since December 2025, Australian teenagers under sixteen years old have not been able to make accounts on social media platforms.
Technology analyst and journalist Carmi Levy told the CBC that Canada is long overdue for regulation addressing online harms, including excessive screen time. However, he still approaches Rogers’ initiative with caution:
“This is a company that has spent the better part of the last twenty years of the smartphone, social media and wireless era pushing technologies, products and services that are by their very design and definition addictive—and particularly so for younger users,” he told the CBC.
Still, it sets the precedent for other stakeholders in Canada to follow suit, he says. Whether these efforts amount to genuine accountability or reputational performativity remains to be seen.
Estonia’s unique struggle
Across the Atlantic, Estonia also grapples with these challenges. Screen addictions among youth have worsened since the pandemic, with seventeen percent of children showing symptoms of social media and computer game addiction, according to ERR.
These figures have reignited debate over whether Estonia should follow other European countries in banning phone usage in school. In October 2024, Minister of Social Affairs Riina Sikkut announced her support for this. However, teachers largely opposed a blanket ban, claiming that the issue should be addressed at the school level. As a result, policies vary widely; some schools opt for strict bans while others have more relaxed approaches.
The debate is complicated by Estonia’s historical embrace of digital technology. Since the early 1990s, the country has built one of the world’s most advanced digital societies, with citizens accessing most public and private services online. The system’s success and longevity have generally fostered a high level of institutional trust among the population. For Estonians, technology in everyday life is commonplace.
In fact, in 2025, Estonia announced that AI would be formally integrated into the national high school curriculum. Teachers are encouraged to use smartphones as learning tools. At the 2025 Education World Forum, the Estonian Minister of Education and Research Kristina emphasized Estonia’s unique reality: “it’s a little bit strange if we would not allow [our students] to use [their phones] in school, in an educational setting. That would be a very confusing message to 16-year-olds—vote online, vote on a mobile, but don’t use ChatGPT on your phone to learn” (ERR).
The way forward
As debates unfold across both continents, a broader question emerges. If neither telecom companies nor school boards bear sole responsibility for minimizing harmful screen usage, then who should? There is no single answer. Digital technologies are now deeply embedded in modern life, and attempting to forgo them in certain contexts is neither realistic nor desirable. Liberal democracy requires meaningful and equal access to the public sphere, much of which is facilitated by digital technologies.
We must also demand accountability both from the companies that benefit from designing intentionally addictive products, and from our government to enact regulation that supports online safety. Without this, the burden of managing harm is offloaded onto individuals while the systems that produce those harms remain unchanged.
The challenge, then, is not to reject these technologies but to coexist with them in healthier ways. Rather than sheltering them, we must teach the youth who have grown up alongside their phones about the dangers they pose—which is exactly what initiatives like Screen Break set out to accomplish. But there is a crucial second step that, if overlooked, risks undermining the entire effort. We must also demand accountability both from the companies that benefit from designing intentionally addictive products, and from our government to enact regulation that supports online safety. Without this, the burden of managing harm is offloaded onto individuals while the systems that produce those harms remain unchanged. Seen this way, responsibility is split countless ways—among parents, schools, private companies, and policymakers—but that does not diminish their individual importance.
With coordinated public policy addressing both platform design and online harms, our government has the opportunity to ensure that digital technologies do not encroach on democracy, but uplift it.
This article was written by Natalie Jenkins as part of the Local Journalism Initiative.
