Skip to main content
  • State of the Internet

Canada’s Internet Factbook 2023

The latest data on
internet usage in Canada  

CIRA has a mission to build a trusted internet—and helping Canadians understand how we actually access and use the internet is an important part of that effort.

To help advance the national conversation about the internet’s role in our daily lives, CIRA publishes its Canada’s Internet Factbook survey on an annual basis.

Keep reading to learn more about the findings of this year’s survey.

Full survey results

The 2023 Canada’s Internet Factbook survey was conducted by The Strategic Counsel in March 2023. Two thousand adult Canadian internet users (18+) were surveyed via an online panel. The goal of the survey was to identify trends in Canadian internet use.

Full survey results

Executive summary 

For many Canadians, the early months of 2023 offered a return to something that, at least on the surface, resembled pre-pandemic life. Lockdowns were becoming a distant memory, socializing with friends and family in restaurants and other public places was once again a regular occurrence—and many of us ventured back to the office for the first time in a long time. Despite these welcome changes, one aspect of Canadian life remained largely the same. The vast majority of us, from coast to coast to coast, continued to spend a significant portion of our daily lives connected to the internet

Every year, CIRA publishes Canada’s Internet Factbook to help shine a light on how Canadians are really using the internet, and to track how those habits are changing. This year, we’re publishing a four-part blog series of the most significant findings from our annual survey of 2,000 Canadian internet users. Each blog will zero in on a particular trend and delve into what it tells us about where we are today and where we may be headed.

While this year’s research confirms that internet activities consume a big chunk of our time – 50 per cent of us say we spend more than five hours connected every day – this number has not changed substantially since 2016, when just 36 per cent of us spent this much time online. It’s hard to say if this number will climb higher in the coming years, but access to a good internet connection remains absolutely essential for all but a tiny fraction of us. It enriches our lives in many ways, keeping us entertained, helping us stay connected with friends and family, and making new, virtual forms of collaboration possible no matter where people are.

At the same time, there’s a sense that some of the online habits we picked up during the pandemic have begun to level off. The numbers reveal notable changes in two key aspects of pandemic-era online life: video streaming and online shopping. Reported Netflix subscriptions have declined by 10 percentage points from 2022 (61 per cent) to 2023 (51 per cent) and 72 per cent of us say we prefer to shop at traditional “bricks and mortar” stores rather than online, compared to 62 per cent in 2022.

Internet disruptions are a big area of concern for Canadians, with just over one-quarter (27 per cent) of us saying we experienced a major disruption to our home internet in 2022. This is not surprising in a year that saw millions of Canadians lose connectivity for an extended period, as a result of the derecho in Ontario and Quebec in May 2022; a major outage in the Rogers network that impacted people across the country last July; and the disruption caused by Hurricane Fiona in Nova Scotia and PEI in September.

Internet disruptions are a big area of concern for Canadians, with just over one-quarter (27 per cent) of us saying we experienced a major disruption to our home internet in 2022. This is not surprising in a year that saw millions of Canadians lose connectivity for an extended period, as a result of the derecho in Ontario and Quebec in May 2022; a major outage in the Rogers network that impacted people across the country last July; and the disruption caused by Hurricane Fiona in Nova Scotia and PEI in September.

Another key trend finds Canadians increasingly anxious about some of the less positive aspects of their online lives. Cyberbullying and online harassment are a significant source of worry for many Canadians, with about a quarter of us saying we have experienced or witnessed harassment when using the internet. And those ubiquitous social media platforms? They are becoming increasingly problematic for many, with Facebook in particular being singled out as “addictive” by 26 per cent and “toxic” by 31 per cent.

It seems highly unlikely that our dependence on the internet will decline anytime soon. In the meantime, the best course of action is to accept the many positives we derive from this indispensable technology while taking whatever positive and intentional actions we can to reduce the impact of the negatives—or even avoid them altogether.

 

Key findings

About one quarter
(27 per cent)

of Canadians experienced at least one major internet service disruption in 2022. Of those, about half (44 per cent) of Canadians experienced outages because of weather events and about three quarters (71 per cent) experienced an ISP outage.

Facebook remains the most toxic and addictive platform among Canadians

The proportion of Canadians who find social media beneficial has decreased over time to 18 per cent in 2023, down from 25 per cent in 2022 and the lockdown-era high of 35 per cent in 2020.

Visiting specific news/media sites

is the most common way of accessing news online by (30 per cent), followed by Google searches about news events (19 per cent).

Three-quarters of Canadians

are concerned about malware and about one-fifth (19 per cent) have been the victim of a successful cyber attack.

Avoiding wasting time

is a top cited reasons to disconnect (48 per cent) and to relax (41 per cent). People are more likely to have taken at least a one-day break from the internet in the last 12 months (54 per cent) compared to 2022 (41 per cent).

Blog series

Stay tuned for our weekly deep dive into this year’s survey findings. Below you will find links to this year’s blog series as they are published every Wednesday:

Loading…