Social media: The good and the awful |
The beginning of a new year is a good time to look back at the past year and reflect on what we did individually and as a society.
Since the internet is a central part of the lives of many Canadians, that reflection will have to include your part in the online world.
The hefty 700-page Digital 2026 Report at the We Are Social website (https://wearesocial.com/ca-en/blog/2025/10/digital-2026/) is a fascinating and often overwhelming set of statistics and summaries that document the world’s involvement with the internet.
In October the population of the earth was 8.2 billion people and about six billion of them, 73 per cent, were using the internet. In Canada, 95 per cent of us were connected to the internet.
What were those people doing online?
The single largest use was accessing social media. In 2025, there were 5.6 billion active social media user identities in the world, which represents about two thirds of the people on the planet, making them a “supermajority” of internet users.
In Canada, 85 per cent of us have a social media account, Facebook being the........