May 18 , 2010

80% of Canadians are online, StatsCan study

21.7 million people are surfing the net

It's no longer a question of who's using the Internet in Canada, it's who isn't. A new Statistics Canada study released Monday found 80 per cent of Canadians aged 16 and older, or 21.7 million people, used the Internet for personal reasons last year, up from 73 per cent in 2007.

Among young people aged 16 to 24, only two out of every 100 said they didn't send an email, surf the web or visit Facebook last year.

"There's an age group where the usage is approaching saturation, there's very little room to grow," said Statistics Canada analyst Ben Veenhof, who added that not only are more people going online, but they're staying there longer.

Of those who identified themselves as Internet users, 75 per cent said they were online every single day, up from 68 per cent in 2007. Fifty-five per cent said they used the Internet for five hours or more in a typical week, compared with 49 per cent in 2007.

While Newfoundland and Labrador and New Brunswick had the lowest percentages of citizens online, with 69 and 73 per cent, they had the largest growth since 2007 with 15 per cent increases. The highest rates of Internet users at 85 per cent were in both British Columbia and Alberta, followed by 81 per cent in Ontario.

Calgary and Saskatoon were the most online-savvy cities, with web-usage rates at 89 per cent apiece.

A similar proportion of men (81 per cent) and women (80 per cent) used the Internet in 2009.

Among Canadians living in communities with populations of 10,000 or more, 83 per cent used the Internet compared with 73 per cent of those from communities with fewer people. This digital divide on the basis of community size has persisted since 2007, when the respective proportions were 76 and 65 per cent.

The greatest gap, though, related to household income. About 94 per cent of people from households with incomes of $85,000 or more used the Internet in 2009, compared with 56 per cent in households with incomes of $30,000 or less. The respective proportions in 2007 were 90 and 48 per cent.

Internet measurement company comScore estimates just over 22 million Canadians used the Internet in the last month, or about 73 per cent of the population over 15 years old.

Spokesman Bryan Segal said the days of seeing significant growth in the number of Canadian Internet users are probably near over.

"I think we're starting to see a bit of a plateau," he said.

"I definitely think the amount of newbies is slowing down to marginal rates, we used to see huge increases year over year . . . now the growth is definitely slowing."

While Statistics Canada suggested email was the most popular online activity among Canadian Internet users — 93 per cent said they emailed, 78 per cent said they browsed the web, and 75 per cent said they used the Internet for checking the weather or traffic — Segal said his data are a little different.

"Email was listed as the most common online activity but we don't see that, we see things like portals, and conversational media like social networking, and entertainment being higher," he said.

Those who told Statistics Canada they didn't use the Internet were asked why not and they replied with a wide variety of reasons.

"The most common reason was they simply said they had no interest, and that was mentioned by 37 per cent of the respondents" who hadn't been online in the last year, said Veenhof.

Other common answers were: they had no need for the Internet, they lacked skills or training to surf the web, or had limited access to a computer. A minority either cited their age, cost, or fears of technology, objectionable content or security concerns as reasons for avoiding the Internet.

Veenhof said next year's survey will ask different questions about things such as security, privacy concerns and social networking usage.

Statistics Canada also hopes to compare its numbers against international data, to see how Canadians rank against other countries' Internet users.

~The Canadian Press