Survey reveals the state of social media in Canada and finds 94% of adult Canadian internet users have at least one social media account.
Despite concerns fake news is flooding the Internet, Canadians’ love affair with social media shows no signs of slowing. A new survey released today by the Social Media Lab (@SMLabTO), an interdisciplinary research lab at Toronto Metropolitan’s Ted Rogers School of Management (@TRSMRyersonU), offers an in-depth look into the state of social media in Canada. It found that 94% of adults who use the Internet have at least one social media account.
The study surveyed 1,500 Canadians in 2017 using quota sampling by age, gender, and geographical region to match the distributions in the 2016 Statistics Canada Census. Results showed, Facebook was the most popular social media platform with 84% of online Canadian adults reporting they have a Facebook account. And despite concerns that young people are leaving the social networking giant, the study found 95% of young adults aged 18-24 were on Facebook.
Photo-sharing favourites, Pinterest and Instagram, were the fifth and sixth most popular social media platforms with 38% and 37%, respectively, of online Canadians reporting an account. Reddit was the least popular platform of those included in the report with only 9% of online Canadian adults using the discussion website.
Download the report
The report was produced by the Toronto Metropolitan University Social Media Lab, with funding support from the Canada Research Chairs Program (PI: Gruzd) and the Ted Rogers School of Management. It is co-authored by Anatoliy Gruzd, Jenna Jacobson, Philip Mai at Toronto Metropolitan University, and Elizabeth Dubois at the University of Ottawa. The aim of the report is to address the lack of data on social media adoption and use trends in Canada, and it is inspired by the amazing work done by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization in the United States.
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Philip Mai
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