Photo credit: National Post
Less than half of Canadians aged 18 to 39 say they “support the government’s new rules to regulate the web, podcasts, streaming and social media to restrict offensive speech and online harms,” a new poll has discovered.
National Post reports that a new Postmedia Leger poll has found that more Gen Z and millennials are “strongly” opposed to the Trudeau administration’s internet regulation policies.
According to Leger’s vice president, Andrew Enns, “This will be the generation that is probably going to be living with those new rules and changes for the longest period of time. And this generation tends to recoil a little bit about banning things and restricting things.”
The government has made laws to tighten the use of the internet. This includes an online harms bill that attempts to restrict offensive or hateful speech and a bill that would bring online streamlined services under the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), which imposes quotas for online Canadian content.
Enns said research done in previous years has shown an age gap on this issue. Young people are skeptical of government attempts to regulate the web, and older generations are less so.
“There is that generation divide, where you’ve got that older population that is more leery of the web. There is a little bit of push back (from younger voters) and I suspect a bit of scepticism in terms of looking at these new rules regarding regulating the web and podcasts and things like that,” he said.
The poll, conducted between May 24 and 26, used an online panel method and a sample size of 938 Canadians aged between 19 and 39 eligible to vote.
