{"id":17021,"date":"2020-11-17T14:05:21","date_gmt":"2020-11-17T14:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/?p=17021"},"modified":"2024-12-11T00:51:26","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T00:51:26","slug":"social-media-privacy-in-canada-2020-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/2020\/11\/17\/social-media-privacy-in-canada-2020-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Social Media Privacy in Canada 2020 [Report]"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A Canada-wide survey on social media users’ privacy practices and attitudes towards social media data use by third parties. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As the second wave of coronavirus continues to surge in Canada, more people are turning to social media to stay connected. This increased reliance on social media has raised renewed privacy-related questions and concerns about digital trace data users leave behind and how such data is being used and by whom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new report, \u201cSocial Media Privacy in Canada 2020<\/a>,\u201d released today by the Social Media Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s Ted Rogers School of Management, provides a detail examination of practices behind and attitudes towards social media data use by third parties from the perspective of social media users. The report is authored by the Social Media Lab\u2019s co-directors Anatoliy Gruzd and Philip Mai. It is based on a census-balanced online survey of 1,500 online Canadian adults (18+) conducted between April 9\u201317, 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report includes new data on how comfortable Canadians are with different third-party entities, such as marketers, journalists, political parties, accessing their publicly available social media data. According to the report, the majority of Canadians (56%) were uncomfortable with marketers and political parties (52%) accessing information about them or posted by them publicly on social media. In contrast, respondents were least uncomfortable (36%) with academic researchers accessing their publicly available social media data, followed by current (40%) and potential (42%) employers.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhile it is expected that academic research would hold a relatively high level of trust in society,<\/em>\u201d said Gruzd, \u201ca relatively low discomfort level towards employers\u2019 accessing information from social media suggests that at least some participants might have felt that public profiles on platforms like LinkedIn help  improve career prospects.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition, the report also shows that 22% of social media users have never checked or changed the privacy settings of their accounts, putting them at a higher risk of becoming a victim of data breach or identity theft. But what is more concerning is the fact that the percentage of users who have never checked or changed the privacy settings jumps to 33% among older adults (aged 55+).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis finding suggests that social media platforms still have a lot of work to do when it come to educating their users about privacy settings on their platforms, and that older adults might benefit most from targeted information literacy programs<\/em>\u201d said Mai.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other Key Findings:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The majority of users on messaging apps (74%), Snapchat (69%), Facebook (67%), and Instagram (57%), have accounts that are set as private.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. In contrast, on LinkedIn and Reddit, there are more users who set their accounts as public (50% and 47% respectively) than those who set their accounts as private.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Pinterest and YouTube have the highest percentage (14%) of users who are unsure about their account\u2019s privacy setting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. In comparison to the lab\u2019s 2017 data, the percentage of Facebook and Snapchat users who set their accounts to private has dropped by 9% and 8% respectively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. The majority of social media users have non-anonymous accounts on 9 out of 10 most popular social media platforms in Canada (except Reddit).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The report\u2019s authors are available for media interviews to discuss the findings and implications from this new report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the Toronto Metropolitan Social Media Lab<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The\u00a0Social Media Lab<\/a>\u00a0is an interdisciplinary research laboratory at Ted Rogers School of Management at Toronto Metropolitan University. The lab studies how social media is changing the way people and organizations communicate, share information, conduct business and form communities online, and how these changes impact society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For press inquiries, please contact: <\/strong>\nPhilip Mai\nCo-director |  Business & Communications\nphilip.mai@ryerson.ca<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Canada-wide survey on social media users’ privacy practices and attitudes towards social media data use by third parties. As the second wave of coronavirus continues to surge in Canada, more people are turning to social media to stay connected. This increased reliance on social media has raised renewed privacy-related questions and concerns about digital […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":17028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,491,489,493,265,264],"tags":[537,430],"class_list":["post-17021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-announcements","category-blog-post","category-org-soc-med-use","category-privacy","category-research","category-web-apps","tag-privacy","tag-social-media-privacy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17021"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21431,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17021\/revisions\/21431"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/socialmedialab.ca\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}