More than 70 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24 had encountered online hate content in the prior year, according to Statistics Canada.Manuel Ausloos/Reuters
The financial cost of online harm to Canadian children and young people could be as high as $4.8-billion per year, according to a new analysis.
The report, published Monday, estimated that the cost of “platform-facilitated harms,” including cyberbullying, hate speech and social media addiction, experienced by young Canadians under the age of 25 will reach between $2-billion and $4.8-billion this year.
Of this, an estimated $1.7-billion to $3-billion will be borne by federal, provincial and municipal governments, including through health care costs, policing, courts and prisons, and lost tax revenue owing to reduced productivity.
The analysis, compiled by a policy consultancy run by Tyler Meredith, a senior fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and a past economic adviser to former prime minister Justin Trudeau, estimated the cost of emergency departments treating young people for self-harm, attempted suicide and eating disorders, and of police services investigating cyberbullying and online child exploitation.
“The costs of addictive design, algorithmic amplification of damaging content, and inadequate age controls are not borne by the platforms that generate them but by society as a whole,” the report said.
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It measured the costs of a number of harms, including cyberbullying and online hate speech, and problematic online gambling.
Statistics Canada’s 2022 Canadian Internet Use Survey found that 71 per cent of youth aged 15 to 24 had encountered online hate content in the prior year – above the national average of 49 per cent across all age groups.
Mr. Meredith estimated the cost of the justice system handling online hate crimes affecting Canadian youth ranges from $500,000 to $2.3-million per year.
He also examined the cost implications of cyberbullying which, according to Statistics Canada’s 2023 Canadian Health Survey on Children and Youth, affects almost a quarter of those aged 12 to 17.
The cost of emergency department trips, hospital admissions and subsequent visits to doctors, as well as pharmaceutical costs resulting from such victimization could amount to an estimated $136-million to $211-million annually, according to the report.
Cyberbullying and its impact on mental health can also lead to educational disruption and lost productivity among young people in the workplace, the study found. This could result in productivity losses estimated at between $95-million to $142-million per year.
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“Online hate imposes costs on civic life beyond individual victims. Online hate imposes costs that don’t show up in any individual victim’s medical bill or lost paycheque,” the report added.
However, the analysis does not measure the potential long-term costs of impaired educational outcomes on young people’s future earnings, though it warns that online harms “can result in traumatic mental health disorders and eventually delay and degrade human capital acquisition.”
The “caregiver burden – including hours of parental and family labour time diverted to supporting youth with mental health challenges attributable to online harms” is also not captured in the report’s estimates. “If included, it would increase the total potentially substantially,” the report said.
The analysis by Meredith, Boessenkool & Phillips was commissioned by Safer Online Spaces, a coalition that includes the Canadian Centre for Child Protection, Canadian Medical Association and Amanda Todd Legacy Society. The latter group was founded by Carol Todd, whose daughter Amanda died by suicide in 2012 after enduring severe bullying, cyberstalking and sextortion.
The report discussed the design of social media platforms and their addictive features, such as infinite scrolling, which it argued play a part in psychological harms to young users and are “central to the platforms’ business model.”
“Only statutory authority over platform design can correct this,” the report said.
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In June, Canadian Identity Minister Marc Miller introduced a bill designed to tackle online harms, including a social-media ban for users below the age of 16. It would make online platforms ensure their services are safe by design, particularly for children.
The bill, which will be debated by MPs when they return to the House of Commons from their summer break, would also regulate artificial intelligence chatbots. Companies would need to act if a chatbot user appears to be in crisis, such as expressing suicidal thoughts or an intention to self-harm.
Mr. Meredith’s modelling used a cost-of-illness methodology, similar to the method utilized by the Mental Health Commission of Canada to estimate the economic burden of mental illness. His estimates were developed “with an explicit bias towards conservative assumptions,” the report said.
The report said exposure to content inducing self-harm has substantial welfare implications beyond the direct use of the health care system. They include mental health impacts, such as depressive symptoms, anxiety, disordered eating and psychological distress in young people.
Between 2002 and 2020 hospitalization rates more than doubled among children and youth in Ontario for eating-related disorders. The report said the rise over the period in which social media platforms gained widespread use infers “at least a notional connection.”
The analysis found that the costs of child online sexual exploitation are substantial even though only a small minority of young people report online sexual abuse, sextortion and grooming.
As well as significant health care and judicial system costs, these crimes have serious welfare impacts on young people, ranging from anxiety to post-traumatic stress disorder.