I wonder if they may be confusing cause and effect. The cost of living in Canada's major cities is very high, while salaries are stagnant. The primary cause of that is the elevated price of housing.
The result is that large portions of the population, particularly younger folks, barely have the financial means to survive. This plus extreme weather and an absence of third places means they stay home. What do people do, then? Browse the Internet, social media, TV.
What else are they going to do, realistically? At least in places like Toronto.
I dunno. Leave? The economics increasingly don't make sense here relative to other places in the world.
It is a bizarre spin on the situation here but the executive summary from the World Happiness Report does indeed put "social media" front and center. I guess.. No interest in digging into the minutiae right now.
I agree the economics here don’t make sense, but leave where? The rest of the world has increasingly strange, or at least unattractive, economics too.
The US is a difficult and long process to get a green card. Other English-speaking countries aren’t necessarily better: Australia seems similar in terms of being a natural resource extraction economy with insanely high real estate prices. Same productivity and salary concerns with the UK.
Non-English speaking country? One alternative is the Philippines. Most of the population is able to speak English.
You can replace Canada here with almost any other OECD country and this would be accurate.
Governments and societal institutions love to blame external bugbears. Newspapers are certainly no fans of competition from social media.