Rising online racism against South Asians impacts younger generations in Canada
Online racism targeting South Asians is rising in Canada. Young people say social media hostility is reshaping identity, culture and belonging for a new generation.
Jane Christopher studying in Allard Hall, MacEwan Photo credit: Orlah Moore
Rovena Caster was born in Tamil Nadu, India and moved to Canada when she was eight years old. Growing up, she says she often felt pressure to fit in with her peers’ culture.
“My classmates rejected almost every aspect of me,” says Caster, who grew up attending a predominantly white school with few other South Asian students.
Now a university student in Canada, Caster says anti–South Asian rhetoric feels more normalized than ever on social media platforms such as Instagram, where hostile comments and slurs circulate widely and often without consequence.
Experiences like Caster’s reflect a broader national trend. A 2025 study by the Institute of Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a London-based non-profit that researches and combats extremism, disinformation, and digital threats, found a significant rise in both physical and online racism targeting South Asians in Canada.
According to the study, posts originating from Canadian cities on X that contained anti-South Asian slurs increased by more than 1,350 per cent between 2023 and 2024.
“I have…encountered several anti-South Asian comments that make it hard for me to even go to certain social media platforms,” says Caster.
The ISD report also found that hate crimes targeting South Asians in Canada increased by more than 227 per cent between 2019 and 2023.
As the oldest member of a Tamil community youth group in Edmonton, Jane Christopher says she regularly works with South Asian youth who are being affected by the hostile tone they encounter online.
Christopher says that in an increasingly hostile environment, some young people are distancing themselves from their language and cultural traditions.
“The kids don’t want to engage in their culture because they’re very ashamed of it,” she says.
According to Christopher, some youth in the group are reluctant to learn how to speak Tamil because they fear how others may perceive them.
Christopher, an international student from Tamil Nadu, India, moved to Canada at 18 to pursue her education.
She says her experiences with racism have taken different forms depending on the setting.
Christopher says she has experienced “intense forms of racism outside of school,” often in the form of verbal abuse, while racism in school tends to appear as microaggressions rooted in ignorance.
She adds that the persistence of anti-South Asian racism in Canadian communities places an emotional burden on young people.
According to Christopher, many students and youth continue to carry the heavy mental and emotional work of defending their right to belong.
