The State of Anti-Social Behaviour on Social Media: A Census-balanced Survey About Anti-Social Behaviour on Social Media

One of the early promises of social media is that it would give voice to the voiceless and turn the world into a utopic connected village. While we are more connected than ever before, in recent years, social media usage has also been linked to a rise in anti-social behaviour online.

In the context of this report, antisocial behaviour on social media is defined as any interaction between two or more users that is hateful, harmful, or contrary to the norms of an online community or platform. This can include cyberbullying, hate speech, trolling, doxing (revealing one’s personal information without consent), and spreading disinformation about someone or something.

Around the world and here in Canada, users are grappling with the impending normalization of aggressive behaviour, hostility, and toxic discourse in online spaces that demand more precise attention and interventions from policymakers, social media platforms, researchers, and civil society organizations.

At the individual level, anti-social behaviour on social media has reallife psychological and emotional consequences for people. At the community and organizational level, anti-social behaviour can impact work performance and relationships, community ties, and lead to stress and burnout. At the societal level, there is a growing concern that some types of antisocial behaviour, such as hate speech, can erode public trust and confidence in democracy itself.

Using a census-balanced sample of the Canadian population (18+), this report aims to empirically shed light on this dangerous trend by analyzing how anti-social behaviour manifests on social media and how it affects different demographic groups in Canada.

To establish a point of reference, the report opens with a brief overview of the social media landscape in Canada (Section 1). The following three sections examine Canadians’ experiences with different types of anti-social behaviour on social media (Section 2), the impact of anti-social behaviour (Section 3), and the responses to acts of anti-social behaviour (Section 4).