Eurostat: 42.3% of internet users in EU saw hostile messages online in 2025
In 2025, about 42.3 per cent of internet users in the European Union encountered messages online that they considered hostile and degrading towards specific groups of people or individuals, the bloc’s statistics agency Eurostat said on May 15.
The EU aggregate is based on 20 countries for which data are available.
In seven EU countries, more than half of the people encountered such messages. The highest shares were recorded in Hungary (60.9 per cent), Finland (56.7 per cent) and Slovakia (56.2 per cent).
In contrast, the lowest shares were in Latvia (29.3 per cent), Greece (29.4 per cent), Germany (33.7 per cent) and Lithuania (33.8 per cent).
In Bulgaria, the figure was 34.2 per cent.
Hostile and degrading messages targeted different groups of people or individuals, Eurostat said.
Most people saw messages that targeted people for their political or social views (33.7 per cent), racial and ethnic origin (25.5 per cent), sexual orientation (23.4 per cent) and religion or belief (22.8 per cent).
Hostile messages also targeted people based on sex (16.9 per cent), disability (11.5 per cent), age (8.8 per cent), or other personal characteristics (8.5 per cent).
(Main photo: Ilker/ sxc.hu)
