Quebec navigates less and less in French on the Web. Only 64% of Quebec Internet users use mainly Tremblay’s language on the Internet, a decrease of 12% compared to 2020. For the first time since the publication of the NETendances surveys, a majority of Montreal Internet users prefer English as the language of use on the Web.
“This decline in the use of the French language to browse the Internet is consistent with the decline in the use of French as the first official language spoken at home, which was recently observed by Statistics Canada,” says Claire Bourget, Director at the Academy of Digital Transformations (ATN) of Laval University.
The digital portrait of the regions presented Thursday by the ATN illustrates a decline in French which is winning over Quebecers even in the virtual sphere. The metropolis, according to the survey, has experienced the biggest backlash for two years, with an 18% decrease in Internet users who favor French first on the Web. Today, only 43% of Montrealers surf mainly in this language, unlike 52% who do so in English.
The Capitale-Nationale follows closely with a decline of 17% during the same period. In 2020, nine out of 10 people surfed mainly in French in the region, a proportion that had fallen, two years later, to seven out of 10 people. Montérégie and the Laurentides region are also showing a significant decline, the use of French on the Internet down from 79% to 62% and 87% to 71% respectively over the past two years.
Gaspésie and Îles-de-la-Madeleine have seen the opposite trend since 2020, as French has gained ground on the Internet in this region. Today, according to the NETendances survey, 95% of Internet users browse in French, up 10% compared to the most recent portrait published two years ago.
The survey also draws a portrait of the 475,000 Quebec adults, or 7% of the population of voting age in Quebec, who have no Internet access at home. Three-quarters of them are over 55, the vast majority (85%) have an elementary or secondary diploma, half live alone and earn a family income of less than $40,000.
The digital portrait of the regions also shows that for the past two years, the North Shore has succeeded in catching up with the rest of Quebec in terms of the number of households connected to the Internet. About 95% of homes are now connected to the Web, an increase of 7% compared to 2020. The Quebec average, in this regard, is 93%.
The results of the survey come from 10 data collections carried out between October 2021 and July 2022 with more than 11,000 Quebecers aged 18 and over. Most of the information collected comes from questionnaires completed online.