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New data from Statistics Canada shows that 80 per cent of Canadians think they are seeing “misleading, false, or inaccurate” information online at least once a month.
The latest Insights on Canadian Society study examined the “sources and platforms through which Canadians access news or information, how often they report encountering misleading information,” and whether Canadians find it “increasingly difficult to distinguish between true and false information.”
The study also looked at the relationship between misinformation, confidence in the Canadian media and trust in others.
Sixty-one per cent of Canadians reported being “very concerned” or “extremely concerned” about online misinformation in 2025, according to the data.
Nearly half of Canadians (47 per cent) also reported they are finding it “harder to distinguish between true and false news or information” compared to three years prior.
Canadians also reported that they rely on different news sources and a “similar proportion of Canadians of all ages reported difficulties in telling truth from falsehood.”
It was also reported that “a strong confidence in the Canadian media was less likely to report that it has become harder to tell true from false news or information,” (44 per cent) compared with those with lower confidence in the Canadian media (49 per cent).
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In contrast, lower confidence in the Canadian media was associated with “greater self-reported difficulty in identifying misleading content.”
“People now face the added responsibility of questioning whether what they see and read online is accurate, while also being more likely to encounter sophisticated forms of misleading or false content, such as fabricated content, manipulated images and deepfakes (i.e., misleading videos or images generated by artificial intelligence),” the study states.
The study also found that women (65 per cent) were more likely than men (58 per cent) to get information from “close contacts.”
Meanwhile, men (38 per cent) were more likely than women (31 per cent) to use video and audio streaming platforms to obtain information.
Previous research by Statistics Canada also found that men (73 per cent) were slightly more likely than women (70 per cent) to watch user-generated videos online in 2022.
Also in the same year, more than seven in 10 Canadians (72 per cent) reported having watched user-generated videos in the previous three months. This percentage was higher among Canadians under the age of 35 (88 per cent).
“Frequent consumption of this type of content could potentially lead to the formation of trusting parasocial relationships with content creators, which may be one factor contributing to video and audio streaming platforms being among the most often-cited information sources,” the 2026 study reads.
Canadians were found to most typically obtain news or information from news organizations (66 per cent), close contacts (62 per cent), social media platforms (54 per cent) and television programming (52 per cent).
However, some traditional information sources, such as radio (38 per cent) and print media (21 per cent), were less frequently reported.
More than three-quarters of Canadians aged 75 years and older (78 per cent) relied on news organizations to receive information, compared with close to half (49 per cent) of Canadians aged 15 to 24.
Among Canadians under 35, social media was the most common source for news or information at 78 per cent. Its use dropped to 19 per cent among those 75 and older.
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