Over half of young people see racist content online about immigrants, poll suggests

OTTAWA — Over half of Canadians under age 35 come across racist or prejudiced remarks about immigrants on the internet, a new survey suggests.

Forty-two per cent of all respondents to the online survey by Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies said they saw or heard racist content about immigrants in cyberspace.

Almost half aged 18 to 34 said they encountered racist remarks about Black people online, and the same proportion heard such remarks about Indigenous people.

About two in five in the same age group said they ran into this type of content about Asian Canadians.

The online survey of 1,967 Canadians during the week of April 25 cannot be assigned a margin of error because internet-based polls are not considered random samples.

Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies, said the indication that younger people are more likely to see this sort of content is unsurprising.

“A lot more young people are exposed to these things because they're much more active and engaged on social media,” he said.