Most Canadian teens have seen violence, gore online: survey

Young people use their phones to view social media in Sydney, Nov. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Rick Rycroft, File)

As Canada edges toward legislation meant to protect youths online, a new survey suggests most teens in the country have encountered real violence or gore on the internet. 

Eighty-five per cent of the 1,007 teens who participated in an online survey in January commissioned by scholarly organization DIY: Digital Safety and the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, reported seeing either form of brutality online.

More than 70 per cent had seen videos of physical fights, 65 per cent had viewed police violence, and 52 per cent watched someone being injured or killed in a war. Ten per cent reported seeing child sexual abuse material. 

Half of respondents said they had watched footage of late right-wing activist Charlie Kirk being assassinated on stage at Utah Valley University last September, while 33 per cent had viewed mass or school shooting videos.

“The rates at which young people were seeing this and the types of content they were seeing at high rates really surprised us, and I think even surprised the folks at the Canadian Centre for Child Protection — and they’re not an easy group to shock because they see the worst of the worst online,” said Alexa Dodge, the report’s lead author and an associate professor of criminology at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia.

She became interested in trying to quantify how many Canadian teens were exposed to graphic content online when hosting some focus groups.

The young people involved were telling her they regularly see disturbing content and a lot of the time, they didn’t even seek it out. It was served to them by an algorithm as they scrolled social media.

“They were telling us we see these car accidents where people die or lose a limb, and it’s really disturbing and it’s just popping up and ‘I don’t like it when that happens,’” Dodge recalled.

“I started to think this is something I’d like to know more about.”

But there was a dearth of Canadian data on the topic, especially when compared to how much info Australia, New Zealand and the U.K. are armed with.

Canadian data would give policymakers, teachers and advocates the evidence they need to shape regulations and help more teens, Dodge reasoned, so she and the researchers set out to collect the information themselves.

Almost 40 per cent of the teens they surveyed said the graphic content they were served cropped up unexpectedly in posts from strangers. 

More than 30 per cent blamed the platforms’ algorithmic recommendations for the material that showed up on their timelines. Seven per cent admitted they had searched for the content themselves.

Exposure to graphic material was most common on YouTube, followed closely by TikTok and then Instagram, the study found.

After seeing violence or gore, most of the surveyed teens told researchers they either do nothing or they block, remove or mute the account that posted the content. In the 11 per cent of instances when teens reported violence or gore to an app or platform, the reporting often did not result in the content being removed.

Dodge said that was a “really powerful” finding because it shows how much the videos stuck with some teens and how much they wish someone was doing something to remove them quickly.

Her findings were derived from an online survey conducted by polling firm Leger.

The Canadian Research Insights Council, an industry organization that promotes polling standards, says online surveys cannot be assigned a margin of error because they do not randomly sample the population.

The research was released weeks after Heritage Minister Marc Miller revealed the federal government’s plans to regulate social media and artificial intelligence-based chatbot companies. 

As part of that regulation, Miller said social media platforms, including Facebook and X, will have to block Canadian users under 16 from accessing their platform unless they follow unspecified safeguards.

Dodge suggests there are other measures that can be taken. She said platforms could be forced to ensure algorithms do not amplify or promote violent and gore content to youth.

Legislation could also require companies to issue transparency reports on how much troubling content they’re aware of on their platforms and what they’re doing or not doing to get it taken down.

Tara Deschamps, The Canadian Press