Online Harassment Statistics Canada [2026]

Statistics Canada 2019 found that 18% of Canadian women and 14% of men experienced online harassment in the 12 months before the survey. The gap widens sharply among sexual minorities and transgender Canadians. Cyberbullying affects one in four Canadian youth aged 12 to 17. This post compiles prevalence, demographic breakdowns, platform tactics, and the Criminal Code framework behind online abuse in Canada, with links to the fraud research hub for broader context.

What counts as online harassment in Canada

The RCMP defines cyberbullying as using computers, smartphones, or other connected devices to embarrass, hurt, mock, or threaten someone online. In Canada, that conduct can remain a social harm or escalate into a criminal offence, depending on its severity and intent. The legal system treats online harassment as a spectrum rather than a single offence.

Online harassment is not a single Criminal Code offence in Canada. Depending on the conduct, it can fall under three different sections, according to the Department of Justice Canada. Section 162.1 makes it an indictable offence, punishable by up to five years in prison, to distribute an intimate image without consent. Section 264 defines criminal harassment as repeatedly following, communicating with, or threatening someone in a way that causes reasonable fear for their safety, carrying up to 10 years in prison. Section 372 targets false or repeated harassing communications sent with intent to alarm or harass, with a maximum two-year sentence. The full criminal-harassment framework, including stalking-specific case law, is covered in stalking statistics Canada.

How common is online harassment in Canada: headline statistics

Statistics Canada 2023 found that one in four Canadian youth aged 12 to 17 (25%) reported being cyberbullied. Another 25% of young adults aged 18 to 29 reported some form of cybervictimization in the same study. Police-reported data tells a narrower story. Harassing and threatening behaviours accounted for 14% of the 41,162 cybercrime incidents Statistics Canada recorded across Canada in the first six months of 2024, per Statistics Canada 2024. That gap between self-reported and police-reported figures shows how much online harassment never reaches police. Cyberbullying and harassment are one slice of Canada’s broader technology-facilitated crime picture; cybercrime statistics Canada covers fraud, ransomware, and data-breach trends from the same police-reported dataset.

Online harassment by gender, age, and 2SLGBTQ+ status: women, men, and youth compared

Young women face the widest gap of any age cohort. Statistics Canada 2023 found that young women aged 18 to 29 experienced cybervictimization at nearly twice the rate of young men in the same age group, 32% versus 17%. That gap holds even though overall women-versus-men rates, 18% versus 14%, are narrower across the full adult population.

Sexual orientation widens the gap further. Statistics Canada 2020 found that sexual minority Canadians were more than twice as likely as heterosexual Canadians to report online harassment, 37% versus 15%. Bisexual women faced the steepest rate of any group measured: 50%, compared with 18% of heterosexual women.

Age compounds the disparity for LGBTQ2 young adults. Statistics Canada 2023 reported that LGBTQ2 Canadians aged 18 to 29 were roughly twice as likely as their non-LGBTQ2 peers to experience cybervictimization, 49% versus 23%. First Nations youth living off-reserve, aged 12 to 17, reported cyberbullying at nearly twice the rate of non-Indigenous youth, 34% versus 24%, per Statistics Canada 2023.

Cyberbullying among Canadian youth

Gender identity, not sex, drives the sharpest divide in youth cyberbullying rates. Statistics Canada 2023 found nearly identical rates for boys (24%) and girls (25%) aged 12 to 17. Youth who identified with a gender other than man or woman reported a far higher rate: 52%. Sexual orientation shows a similar pattern: same-gender attracted youth aged 15 to 17 experienced cyberbullying at 33%, compared with 26% of opposite-gender attracted peers.

Social media use itself predicts risk. Canadian youth who used social media constantly were cyberbullied at nearly three times the rate of those who never used it, 34% versus 12%, per Statistics Canada 2023. Parental awareness cuts the other way. Cyberbullying rates dropped to 22% when parents were reported to be always or often aware of their child’s online activity, compared with 29% when awareness was low.

The most common tactic among Canadian youth aged 12 to 17 was being threatened or insulted online or by text, at 16%. Being excluded from an online community followed at 13%, and having hurtful information posted about them affected 9%, according to Statistics Canada 2023.

Platforms, tactics, and non-consensual intimate images

Among young adults aged 18 to 29, online harm rarely stops at insults. Statistics Canada 2023 found four dominant tactics:

• Unwanted sexual images or messages (15%)
• Threatening or aggressive messages (13%)
• Being pressured to send explicit content (6%)
• Image-based sexual abuse (2%)

The most severe tactic, image-based sexual abuse, is a distinct Criminal Code offence. Under Section 162.1(2), an intimate image is a visual recording showing nudity, genitals, the anal region, or breasts, or explicit sexual activity. It must be captured in circumstances giving rise to a reasonable expectation of privacy. That definition applies whether the image was originally shared consensually or not.

Platform-scale abuse can now generate non-consensual images automatically. Canada’s Privacy Commissioner found in June 2026 that X Corp. and xAI violated federal privacy law. Their Grok chatbot’s image tool was used to generate an estimated 1.8 to 3 million sexualized deepfake images. The tool produced images at a peak rate of more than 6,000 per hour, including more than 23,000 suspected child-exploitation images, with 126 posts removed in Canada. CBC News reported the Commissioner found Grok’s tool was launched without adequate privacy safeguards, allowing users worldwide to create deepfakes “targeting women and children.”

Criminal harassment, threats, and Canada’s legal response to online abuse

Criminal harassment under Section 264 is Canada’s broadest tool for prosecuting persistent online abuse, carrying a maximum sentence of 10 years’ imprisonment on indictment. The offence covers repeated online conduct that causes a person to reasonably fear for their safety. The full stalking-specific dataset, including sentencing patterns and case law, is covered in stalking statistics Canada.

Section 372(3) targets repeated harassing telecommunications made without lawful excuse and with intent to harass. It captures much of the everyday pattern of online harassment, repeated texts, emails, and social-media messages, that can fall short of a full criminal-harassment charge. The maximum penalty is two years in prison.

Total police-reported cybercrime incidents in Canada reached 41,162 in just the first six months of 2024, per Statistics Canada 2024. Fraud and identity offences led at 56% of that total, followed by child pornography offences at 16% and harassing or threatening behaviours at 14%. A separate category, hate-motivated cyber offences prosecuted under Sections 318 and 319, is covered in hate crime statistics Canada.

Reporting rates and why online harassment goes undercounted

Most online harassment never reaches police. Fewer than 20% of cyberbullying incidents in Canada are reported to police, according to the RCMP, a gap that leaves most online abuse invisible in official crime statistics.

Young people rarely turn to adults first. Sixty-five percent of Canadian youth say they would tell a friend rather than a parent if they were cyberbullied, per the RCMP. About half report having witnessed cyberbullying directed at someone else.

When asked how they responded to online harassment, 28% of Canadian women and 19% of men said they took protective action, such as blocking the harasser or deleting an account. Statistics Canada data show that coping response is far more common than reporting to police.

Anonymity is common among perpetrators too. A third of women (33%) and more than half of men (53%) who experienced online harassment told Statistics Canada they did not know the perpetrator’s gender. That gap complicates both police reporting and any resulting investigation.

What online harassment victims and families should know

Digital evidence disappears quickly. A harasser can delete a message, an account, or an entire platform history within minutes of posting it, leaving a victim with no record to support a complaint.

As licensed PIs, we preserve time-stamped screenshots, platform metadata, and message records before a harasser can delete them. That evidence supports both a Section 264 criminal harassment complaint and a Section 162.1 non-consensual intimate image case. The Department of Justice Canada’s Handbook for Police and Crown Prosecutors on Criminal Harassment recommends the same documentation approach for technology-facilitated abuse.

Social media and internet investigation services at +1 (888) 680-0036 — Licensed · Insured · Bonded — provide court-admissible documentation for online harassment, cyberstalking, and non-consensual intimate image cases across Ontario.