Social media

Social media are interactive technologies that facilitate the creation, sharing and aggregation of content (such as ideas, interests, and other forms of expression) amongst virtual communities and networks. Common features include:
The term social in regard to media suggests platforms enable communal activity. Social media can enhance and extend human networks. Users access social media through web-based apps or custom apps on mobile devices. These interactive platforms allow individuals, communities, and organizations to share, co-create, discuss, participate in, and modify user-generated or self-curated content. Social media is used to document memories, learn, and form friendships. They may be used to promote people, companies, products, and ideas. Social media can be used to consume, publish, or share news.
Social media platforms can be categorized based on their primary function. Social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Threads focus on building personal and professional connections. Microblogging platforms, such as Twitter (now X) and Mastodon, emphasize short-form content and rapid information sharing. Media sharing networks, including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat, allow users to share images, videos, and live streams. Discussion and community forums like Reddit, Quora, and Discord facilitate conversations, Q&A, and niche community engagement. Live streaming platforms, such as Twitch, Facebook Live, and YouTube Live, enable real-time audience interaction. Finally, decentralized social media platforms like Mastodon and Bluesky aim to provide social networking without corporate control, offering users more autonomy over their data and interactions.
Popular social media platforms with over 100 million registered users include Twitter, Facebook, WeChat, ShareChat, Instagram, Pinterest, QZone, Weibo, VK, Tumblr, Baidu Tieba, Threads and LinkedIn. Depending on interpretation, other popular platforms that are sometimes referred to as social media services include YouTube, Letterboxd, QQ, Quora, Telegram, WhatsApp, Signal, LINE, Snapchat, Viber, Reddit, Discord, and TikTok. Wikis are examples of collaborative content creation.
Social media outlets differ from old media (e.g. newspapers, TV, and radio broadcasting) in many ways, including quality, reach, frequency, usability, relevancy, and permanence. Social media outlets operate in a dialogic transmission system (many sources to many receivers) while traditional media operate under a monologic transmission model (one source to many receivers). For instance, a newspaper is delivered to many subscribers, and a radio station broadcasts the same programs to a city.
Social media has been criticized for a range of negative impacts on children and teenagers, including exposure to inappropriate content, exploitation by adults, sleep problems, attention problems, feelings of exclusion, and various mental health maladies. Social media has also received criticism as worsening political polarization and undermining democracy. Major news outlets often have strong controls in place to avoid and fix false claims, but social media's unique qualities bring viral content with little to no oversight. "Algorithms that track user engagement to prioritize what is shown tend to favor content that spurs negative emotions like anger and outrage. Overall, most online misinformation originates from a small minority of "superspreaders," but social media amplifies their reach and influence."
The PLATO system was launched in 1960 at the University of Illinois and subsequently commercially marketed by Control Data Corporation. It offered early forms of social media features with innovations such as Notes, PLATO's message-forum application; TERM-talk, its instant-messaging feature; Talkomatic, perhaps the first online chat room; News Report, a crowdsourced online newspaper, and blog and Access Lists, enabling the owner of a note file or other application to limit access to a certain set of users, for example, only friends, classmates, or co-workers.
ARPANET, which came online in 1969, had by the late 1970s enabled exchange of non-government/business ideas and communication, as evidenced by the network etiquette (or "netiquette") described in a 1982 handbook on computing at MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. ARPANET evolved into the Internet in the 1990s. Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, was the first open social media app, established in 1980.
A precursor of the electronic bulletin board system (BBS), known as Community Memory, appeared by 1973. Mainstream BBSs arrived with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which launched on February 16, 1978. Before long, most major US cities had more than one BBS, running on TRS-80, Apple II, Atari 8-bit computers, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Sinclair, and others. CompuServe, Prodigy, and AOL were three of the largest BBS companies and were the first to migrate to the Internet in the 1990s. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, BBSes numbered in the tens of thousands in North America alone. Message forums were the signature BBS phenomenon throughout the 1980s and early 1990s.
In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee integrated HTML hypertext software with the Internet, creating the World Wide Web. This breakthrough led to an explosion of blogs, list servers, and email services. Message forums migrated to the web, and evolved into Internet forums, supported by cheaper access as well as the ability to handle far more people simultaneously.
These early text-based systems expanded to include images and video in the 21st century, aided by digital cameras and camera phones.
The evolution of online services progressed from serving as channels for networked communication to becoming interactive platforms for networked social interaction with the advent of Web 2.0.
Social media started in the mid-1990s with the invention of platforms like GeoCities, Classmates.com, and SixDegrees.com. While instant messaging and chat clients existed at the time, SixDegrees was unique as it was the first online service designed for people to connect using their actual names instead of anonymously. It boasted features like profiles, friends lists, and school affiliations, making it "the very first social networking site". The platform's name was inspired by the "six degrees of separation" concept, which suggests that every person on the planet is just six connections away from everyone else.
In the early 2000s, social media platforms gained widespread popularity with BlackPlanet (1999) preceding Friendster and Myspace, followed by Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter.
Research from 2015 reported that globally, users spent 22% of their online time on social networks, likely fueled by the availability of smartphones. As of 2023, as many as 4.76 billion people used social media some 59% of the global population.
A 2015 review identified four features unique to social media services:
In 2019, Merriam-Webster defined social media as "forms of electronic communication (such as websites for social networking and microblogging) through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content (such as videos)."
Social media encompasses an expanding suite of services:
Some services offer more than one type of service.
Mobile social media refers to the use of social media on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. It is distinguished by its ubiquity, since users no longer have to be at a desk in order to participate on a computer. Mobile services can further make use of the user's immediate location to offer information, connections, or services relevant to that location.
According to Andreas Kaplan, mobile social media activities fall among four types:
Certain content has the potential to spread virally, an analogy for the way viral infections spread contagiously from individual to individual. One user spreads a post across their network, which leads those users to follow suit. A post from a relatively unknown user can reach vast numbers of people within hours. Virality is not guaranteed; few posts make the transition.
Viral marketing campaigns are particularly attractive to businesses because they can achieve widespread advertising coverage at a fraction of the cost of traditional marketing campaigns. Nonprofit organizations and activists may also attempt to spread content virally.
Social media sites provide specific functionality to help users re-share content, such as X's and Facebook's "like" option.
Bots are automated programs that operate on the internet. They automate many communication tasks. This has led to the creation of an industry of bot providers.
Chatbots and social bots are programmed to mimic human interactions such as liking, commenting, and following. Bots have also been developed to facilitate social media marketing. Bots have led the marketing industry into an analytical crisis, as bots make it difficult to differentiate between human interactions and bot interactions. Some bots violate platforms' terms of use, which can result in bans and campaigns to eliminate bots categorically. Bots may even pose as real people to avoid prohibitions.
'Cyborgs'—either bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots—are used for both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, from spreading fake news to creating marketing buzz. A common use claimed to be legitimate includes posting at a specific time. A human writes a post content and the bot posts it a specific time. In other cases, cyborgs spread fake news. Cyborgs may work as sock puppets, where one human pretends to be someone else, or operates multiple accounts, each pretending to be a person.
A multitude of United States patents are related to social media, growing rapidly. As of 2020, over 5000 social media patent applications had been published in the United States. Only slightly over 100 patents had been issued.
As an instance of technological convergence, various social media platforms adapted functionality beyond their original scope, increasingly overlapping with each other.
Examples are the social hub site Facebook launching an integrated video platform in May 2007, and Instagram, whose original scope was low-resolution photo sharing, introducing the ability to share quarter-minute 640×640 pixel videos (later extended to a minute with increased resolution). Instagram later implemented stories (short videos self-destructing after 24 hours), a concept popularized by Snapchat, as well as IGTV, for seekable videos. Stories were then adopted by YouTube.
X, whose original scope was text-based microblogging, later adopted photo sharing, then video sharing, then a media studio for business users, after YouTube's Creator Studio.
The discussion platform Reddit added an integrated image hoster replacing the external image sharing platform Imgur, and then an internal video hosting service, followed by image galleries (multiple images in a single post), known from Imgur. Imgur implemented video sharing.
YouTube rolled out a Community feature, for sharing text-only posts and polls.
According to Statista, it is estimated that, in 2022, around 3.96 billion people were using social media globally. This number is up from 3.6 billion in 2020.
The following is a list of the most popular social networking services based on the number of active users as of January 2024 per Statista.
A 2009 study suggested that individual differences may help explain who uses social media: extraversion and openness have a positive relationship with social media, while emotional stability has a negative sloping relationship with social media. A 2015 study reported that people with a higher social comparison orientation appear to use social media more heavily than people with low social comparison orientation.
Common Sense Media reported that children under age 13 in the United States use social networking services although many social media sites require users to be 13 or older. In 2017, the firm conducted a survey of parents of children from birth to age 8 and reported that 4% of children at this age used social media sites such as Instagram, Snapchat, or (now-defunct) Musical.ly "often" or "sometimes". Their 2019 survey surveyed Americans ages 8–16 and reported that about 31% of children ages 8–12 use social media. In that survey, teens aged 16–18 were asked when they started using social media. the median age was 14, although 28% said they started to use it before reaching 13.
Social media played a role in communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. In June 2020, a survey by Cartoon Network and the Cyberbullying Research Center surveyed Americans tweens (ages 9–12) and reported that the most popular application was YouTube (67%). (as age increased, tweens were more likely to have used social media apps and games.) Similarly, Common Sense Media's 2020 survey of Americans ages 13–18 reported that YouTube was the most popular (used by 86% of 13- to 18-year-olds). As children aged, they increasingly utilized social media services and often used YouTube to consume content.
While adults were using social media before the COVID-19 pandemic, more started using it to stay socially connected and to get pandemic updates.
Healthcare workers and systems became more aware of social media as a place people were getting health information:
This also led to the spread of disinformation. On December 11, 2020, the CDC put out a "Call to Action: Managing the Infodemic". Some healthcare organizations used hashtags as interventions and published articles on their Twitter data:
However others in the medical community were concerned about social media addiction, as it became an increasingly important context and therefore "source of social validation and reinforcement" and were unsure whether increased social media use was harmful.
Governments may use social media to (for example):
Social media has been used extensively in civil and criminal investigations. It has also been used to search for missing persons. Police departments often make use of official social media accounts to engage with the public, publicize police activity, and burnish law enforcement's image; conversely, video footage of citizen-documented police brutality and other misconduct has sometimes been posted to social media.
In the United States, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement identifies and track individuals via social media, and has apprehended some people via social media-based sting operations. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (also known as CPB) and the United States Department of Homeland Security use social media data as influencing factors during the visa process, and monitor individuals after they have entered the country. CPB officers have also been documented performing searches of electronics and social media behavior at the border, searching both citizens and non-citizens without first obtaining a warrant.
As social media gained momentum among the younger generations, governments began using it to improve their image, especially among the youth. In January 2021, Egyptian authorities were reported to be using Instagram influencers as part of its media ambassadors program. The program was designed to revamp Egypt's image and to counter the bad press Egypt had received because of the country's human rights record. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates participated in similar programs. Similarly, Dubai has extensively relied on social media and influencers to promote tourism. However, Dubai laws have kept these influencers within limits to not offend the authorities, or to criticize the city, politics or religion. The content of these foreign influencers is controlled to make sure that nothing portrays Dubai in a negative light.
Many businesses use social media for marketing, branding, advertising, communication, sales promotions, informal employee-learning/organizational development, competitive analysis, recruiting, relationship management/loyalty programs, and e-Commerce. Companies use social-media monitoring tools to monitor, track, and analyze conversations to aid in their marketing, sales and other programs. Tools range from free, basic applications to subscription-based, tools. Social media offers information on industry trends. Within the finance industry, companies use social media as a tool for analyzing market sentiment. These range from marketing financial products, market trends, and as a tool to identify insider trading. To exploit these opportunities, businesses need guidelines for use on each platform.
Business use of social media is complicated by the fact that the business does not fully control its social media presence. Instead, it makes its case by participating in the "conversation". Business uses social media on a customer-organizational level; and an intra-organizational level.
Social media can encourage entrepreneurship and innovation, by highlighting successes, and by easing access to resources that might not otherwise be readily available/known.
Social media marketing can help promote a product or service and establish connections with customers. Social media marketing can be divided into paid media, earned media, and owned media. Using paid social media firms run advertising on a social media platform. Earned social media appears when firms do something that impresses stakeholders and they spontaneously post content about it. Owned social media is the platform markets itself by creating/promoting content to its users.
Primary uses are to create brand awareness, engage customers by conversation (e.g., customers provide feedback on the firm) and providing access to customer service. Social media's peer-to-peer communication shifts power from the organization to consumers, since consumer content is widely visible and not controlled by the company.
Social media personalities, often referred to as "influencers", are Internet celebrities who are sponsored by marketers to promote products and companies online. Research reports that these endorsements attract the attention of users who have not settled on which products/services to buy, especially younger consumers. The practice of harnessing influencers to market or promote a product or service to their following is commonly referred to as influencer marketing.
In 2013, the United Kingdom Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) began advising celebrities to make it clear whether they had been paid to recommend a product or service by using the hashtag #spon or #ad when endorsing. The US Federal Trade Commission issued similar guidelines.
Social media platforms also enable targeting specific audiences with advertising. Users of social media can share, and comment on the advertisement, turning passive consumers into active promoters and even producers. Targeting requires extra effort by advertisers to understand how to reach the right users. Companies can use humor (such as shitposting) to poke fun at competitors. Advertising can even inspire fanart which can engage new audiences. Hashtags (such as #ejuice and #eliquid) are one way to target interested users.
User content can trigger peer effects, increasing consumer interest even without influencer involvement. A 2012 study focused on this communication reported that communication among peers can affect purchase intentions: direct impact through encouraging conformity, and an indirect impact by increasing product engagement. This study claimed that peer communication about a product increased product engagement.
Social media have a range of uses in politics. Politicians use social media to spread their messages and influence voters.
Dounoucos et al. reported that Twitter use by candidates was unprecedented during the US 2016 election. The public increased its reliance on social-media sites for political information. In the European Union, social media amplified political messages. Foreign-originated social-media campaigns attempt to influence political opinion in another country.
Social media was influential in the Arab Spring in 2011. However, debate persists about the extent to which social media facilitated this. Activists have used social media to report the abuse of human rights in Bahrain. They publicized the brutality of government authorities, who they claimed were detaining, torturing and threatening individuals. Conversely, Bahrain's government used social media to track and target activists. The government stripped citizenship from over 1,000 activists as punishment.
Militant groups use social media as an organizing and recruiting tool. Islamic State (also known as ISIS) used social media. In 2014, #AllEyesonISIS went viral on Arabic X.
Scientists use social media to share their scientific knowledge and research on platforms such as ResearchGate, LinkedIn, Facebook, X, and Academia.edu. The most common platforms are X and blogs. The use of social media reportedly has improved the interaction between scientists, reporters, and the general public. Over 495,000 opinions were shared on X related to science between September 1, 2010, and August 31, 2011. Science related blogs respond to and motivate public interest in learning, following, and discussing science. Posts can be written quickly and allow the reader to interact in real time with authors. One study in the context of climate change reported that climate scientists and scientific institutions played a minimal role in online debate, exceeded by nongovernmental organizations.
Academicians use social media activity to assess academic publications, to measure public sentiment, identify influencer accounts, or crowdsource ideas or solutions. Social media such as Facebook, X are also combined to predict elections via sentiment analysis. Additional social media (e.g. YouTube, Google Trends) can be combined to reach a wider segment of the voting population, minimise media-specific bias, and inexpensively estimate electoral predictions which are on average half of a percentage point off the real vote share.
In some places, students have been forced to surrender their social media passwords to school administrators. Few laws protect student's social media privacy. Organizations such as the ACLU call for more privacy protection. They urge students who are pressured to give up their account information to resist.
Colleges and universities may access applicants' internet services including social media profiles as part of their admissions process. According to Kaplan, Inc, a corporation that provides higher education preparation, in 2012 27% of admissions officers used Google to learn more about an applicant, with 26% checking Facebook. Students whose social media pages include questionable material may be disqualified from admission processes.
Social media comments and images have been used in court cases including employment law, child custody/child support, and disability claims. After an Apple employee criticized his employer on Facebook, he was fired. When the former employee sued Apple for unfair dismissal, the court, after examining the employee's Facebook posts, reported in favor of Apple, stating that the posts breached Apple's policies. After a couple broke up, the man posted song lyrics "that talked about fantasies of killing the rapper's ex-wife" and made threats. A court reported him guilty. In a disability claims case, a woman who fell at work claimed that she was permanently injured; the employer used her social media posts to counter her claims.
Courts do not always admit social media evidence, in part, because screenshots can be faked or tampered with. Judges may consider emojis into account to assess statements made on social media; in one Michigan case where a person alleged that another person had defamed them in an online comment, the judge disagreed, noting that an emoji after the comment that indicated that it was a joke. In a 2014 case in Ontario against a police officer regarding alleged assault of a protester during the G20 summit, the court rejected the Crown's application to use a digital photo of the protest that was anonymously posted online, because it included no metadata verifying its provenance.
On April 9, 2024, the Spirit Lake Tribe in North Dakota and Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin have sued social media companies (Meta Platforms-Facebook, Instagram; Snapchat, TikTok, YouTube, and Google) companies accused of ‘deliberate misconduct’. Their lawsuit describes "a sophisticated and intentional effort that has caused a continuing, substantial, and longterm burden to the Tribe and its members," leaving scarce resources for education, cultural preservation and other social programs.
Social media are used to socialize with friends and family pursue romance and flirt, but not all social needs can be fulfilled by social media. For example, a 2003 article reported that lonely individuals are more likely to use the Internet for emotional support than others. A 2018 survey from Common Sense Media reported that 40% of American teens ages 13–17 thought that social media was "extremely" or "very" important for them to connect with their friends. The same survey reported that 33% of teens said social media was extremely or very important to conduct meaningful conversations with close friends, and 23% of teens said social media was extremely or very important to document and share their lives. A 2020 Gallup poll reported that 53% of adult social media users in the United States thought that social media was a very or moderately important way to keep in touch with people during the COVID-19 pandemic.
In Alone Together Sherry Turkle considered how people confuse social media usage with authentic communication. She claimed that people act differently online and are less concerned about hurting others' feelings. Some online encounters can cause stress and anxiety, due to the difficulty purging online posts, fear of getting hacked, or of universities and employers exploring social media pages. Turkle speculated that many people prefer texting to face-to-face communication, which can contribute to loneliness. Surveys from 2019 reported evidence among teens in the United States and Mexico. Some researchers reported that exchanges that involved direct communication and reciprocal messages correlated with less loneliness.
In social media "stalking" or "creeping" refers to looking at someone's "timeline, status updates, tweets, and online bios" to find information about them and their activities. A sub-category of creeping is creeping ex-partners after a breakup.
Catfishing (creating a false identity) allows bad actors to exploit the lonely.
Self-presentation theory proposes that people consciously manage their self-image or identity related information in social contexts. One aspect of social media is the time invested in customizing a personal profile. Some users segment their audiences based on the image they want to present, pseudonymity and use of multiple accounts on the same platform offer that opportunity.
A 2016 study reported that teenage girls manipulate their self-presentation on social media to appear beautiful as viewed by their peers. Teenage girls attempt to earn regard and acceptance (likes, comments, and shares). When this does not go well, self-confidence and self-satisfaction can decline. A 2018 survey of American teens ages 13–17 by Common Sense Media reported that 45% said likes are at least somewhat important, and 26% at least somewhat agreed that they feel bad about themselves if nobody responds to their photos. Some evidence suggests that perceived rejection may lead to emotional pain, and some may resort to online bullying. according to a 2016 study, users' reward circuits in their brains are more active when their photos are liked by more peers.
A 2016 review concluded that social media can trigger a negative feedback loop of viewing and uploading photos, self-comparison, disappointment, and disordered body perception when social success is not achieved. One 2016 study reported that Pinterest is directly associated with disordered dieting behavior.
People portray themselves on social media in the most appealing way. However, upon seeing one person's curated persona, other people may question why their own lives are not as exciting or fulfilling. One 2017 study reported that problematic social media use (i.e., feeling addicted to social media) was related to lower life satisfaction and self-esteem. Studies have reported that social media comparisons can have dire effects on physical and mental health. In one study, women reported that social media was the most influential source of their body image satisfaction; while men reported them as the second biggest factor. While monitoring the lives of celebrities long predates social media, the ease and immediacy of direct comparisons of pictures and stories with one's own may increase their impact.
A 2021 study reported that 87% of women and 65% of men compared themselves to others on social media.
Efforts to combat such negative effects focused promoting body positivity. In a related study, women aged 18–30 were reported posts that contained side-by-side images of women in the same clothes and setting, but one image was enhanced for Instagram, while the other was an unedited, "realistic" version. Women who participated in this experiment reported a decrease in body dissatisfaction.
Social media can offer a support system for adolescent health, because it allows them to mobilize around health issues that they deem relevant. For example, in a clinical study among adolescent patients undergoing obesity treatment, participants' claimed that social media allowed them to access personalized weight-loss content as well as social support among other adolescents with obesity.
While social media can provide health information, it typically has no mechanism for ensuring the quality of that information. The National Eating Disorders Association reported a high correlation between weight loss content and disorderly eating among women who have been influenced by inaccurate content. Health literacy offers skills to allow users to spot/avoid such content. Efforts by governments and public health organizations to advance health literacy reportedly achieved limited success. The role of parents and caregivers who proactively approach their children with ongoing guidance and open discussions on the benefits and difficulties they may encounter online, demonstrate some reductions in overall anxiety and depression among adolescents.
Social media such as pro-anorexia sites reportedly increase risk of harm by reinforcing damaging health-related behaviors through social media, especially among adolescents.
During the coronavirus pandemic, inaccurate information from all sides spread widely via social media. Topics subject to distortion included treatments, avoiding infection, vaccination, and public policy. Simultaneously, governments and others influenced social media platforms to suppress both accurate and inaccurate information in support of public policy. Heavier social media use was reportedly associated with more acceptance of conspiracy theories, leading to worse mental health and less compliance with public health recommendations.
Social media platforms can serve as a breeding ground for addiction-related behaviors, with studies report that excessive use can lead to addiction-like symptoms. These symptoms include compulsive checking, mood modification, and withdrawal when not using social media, which can result in decreased face-to-face social interactions and contribute to the deterioration of interpersonal relationships and a sense of loneliness.
A 2017 study reported on a link between sleep disturbance and the use of social media. It concluded that blue light from computer/phone displays—and the frequency rather than the duration of time spent, predicted disturbed sleep, termed "obsessive 'checking'". The association between social media use and sleep disturbance has clinical ramifications for young adults. A recent study reported that people in the highest quartile for weekly social media use experienced the most sleep disturbance. The median number of minutes of social media use per day was 61. Females were more likely to experience high levels of sleep disturbance. Many teenagers suffer from sleep deprivation from long hours at night on their phones, and this left them tired and unfocused in school. A 2011 study reported that time spent on Facebook was negatively associated with GPA, but the association with sleep disturbance was not established.
One studied effect of social media is 'Facebook depression', which affects adolescents who spend too much time on social media. This may lead to reclusiveness, which can increase loneliness and low self-esteem. Social media curates content to encourage users to keep scrolling. Studies report children's self-esteem is positively affected by positive comments and negatively affected by negative or lack of comments. This affected self-perception. A 2017 study of almost 6,000 adolescent students reported that those who self-reported addiction-like symptoms of social media use were more likely to report low self-esteem and high levels of depressive symptoms.
A second emotional effect is social media burnout, defined as ambivalence, emotional exhaustion, and depersonalization. Ambivalence is confusion about the benefits from using social media. Emotional exhaustion is stress from using social media. Depersonalization is emotional detachment from social media. The three burnout factors negatively influence the likelihood of continuing on social media.
A third emotional effect is "fear of missing out" (FOMO), which is the "pervasive apprehension that others might be having rewarding experiences from which one is absent." It is associated with increased scrutiny of friends on social media.
Social media can also offer support as Twitter has done for the medical community. X facilitated academic discussion among health professionals and students, while providing a supportive community for these individuals by and allowing members to support each other through likes, comments, and posts. Access to social media offered a way to keep older adults connected, after the deaths of partners and geographical distance between friends and loved ones. In March 2025, a Pakistani man killed a WhatsApp group admin in anger after being removed from the chat.
Media critic Siva Vaidhyanathan refers to social media as 'anti-social media' in reference to its negative impacts including on loneliness and political polarization. Audrey Tang also uses the term antisocial in reference to its impact on democracy.
Many critics point to studies showing social media algorithms elevate more partisan and inflammatory content. Because of recommendation algorithms that filter and display news content that matches users' political preferences, one potential impact is an increase in political polarization due to selective exposure. Political polarization is the divergence of political attitudes towards ideological extremes. Selective exposure occurs when an individual favors information that supports their beliefs and avoids information that conflicts with them. Jonathan Haidt compared the impact of social media to the Tower of Babel and the chaos it unleashed as a result.
Aviv Ovadya argues that these algorithms incentivize the creation of divisive content in addition to promoting existing divisive content, but could be designed to reduce polarization instead. In 2017, Facebook gave its new emoji reactions five times the weight in its algorithms as its like button, which data scientists at the company in 2019 confirmed had disproportionately boosted toxicity, misinformation and low-quality news. Some popular ideas for how to combat selective exposure have had no or opposite impacts. Some advocate for media literacy as a solution. Others argue that less social media, or more local journalism could help address political polarization.
A 2018 study reported that social media increases the power of stereotypes. Stereotypes can have both negative and positive connotations. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, youth were accused of responsibility for spreading the disease. Elderly people get stereotyped as lacking knowledge of proper behavior on social media. Social media platforms usually amplify these stereotypes by reinforcing age-based biases through certain algorithms as well as user-generated content. Unfortunately, these stereotypes contribute to social divide and negatively impact the way users interact online.
Social media allows for mass cultural exchange and intercultural communication, despite different ways of communicating in various cultures.
Social media has affected the way youth communicate, by introducing new forms of language. Novel acronyms save time, as illustrated by "LOL", which is the ubiquitous shortcut for "laugh out loud".
The hashtag was created to simplify searching for information and to allow users to highlight topics of interest in the hope of attracting the attention of others. Hashtags can be used to advocate for a movement, mark content for future use, and allow other users to contribute to a discussion.
For some young people, social media and texting have largely replaced in person communications, made worse by pandemic isolation, delaying the development of conversation and other social skills.
What is socially acceptable is now heavily based on social media. The American Academy of Pediatrics reported that bullying, the making of non-inclusive friend groups, and sexual experimentation have increased cyberbullying, privacy issues, and sending sexual images or messages. Sexting and revenge porn became rampant, particularly among minors, with legal implications and resulting trauma risk. However, adolescents can learn basic social and technical skills online. Social media, can strengthen relationships just by keeping in touch, making more friends, and engaging in community activities.
In July 2014, in response to WikiLeaks' release of a secret suppression order made by the Victorian Supreme Court, media lawyers were quoted in the Australian media to the effect that "anyone who tweets a link to the WikiLeaks report, posts it on Facebook, or shares it in any way online could also face charges".
In November 2024, the federal government passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Bill 2024 introduced by the Albanese government banning people under the age of 16 from using most social media platforms, which would come into effect in late 2025. Presented by Minister for Communications Michelle Rowland, the bill was created as an attempt at reducing social media harms for young people and responding to the concerns of parents. The stated penalty for breach of the new laws on the part of social media platforms was a financial penalty of AU$49.5 million. The ban would apply to many major social media platforms, including TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter, but would exempt platforms deemed to meet educational or health needs of people under 16, including YouTube and Google Classroom. Supporters of the ban included the advocacy group 36 Months and media corporation News Corp Australia which ran a campaign titled Let Them Be Kids, whilst opposers expressed concern that the ban could cause isolation amongst teenagers belonging to marginalised groups such as the LGBTQ community or migrant/culturally diverse backgrounds, and that the ban could stifle creativity and freedom of expression amongst young people.
On 27 July 2020, in Egypt, two women were sentenced to two years of imprisonment for posting TikTok videos, which the government claimed as "violating family values".
In the 2014 Thai coup d'état, the public was explicitly instructed not to 'share' or 'like' dissenting views on social media or face prison.
Historically, platforms were responsible for moderating the content that they presented. They set rules for what was allowable, decided which content to promote and which to ignore. The US enacted the Communications Decency Act in 1996. Section 230 of that act exempted internet platforms from legal liability for content authored by third parties.
In 2024, legislation was enacted in Florida requiring social media companies to verify the age of people with accounts, and to prohibit holding an account for people aged under 14, and between 14 and 16 in the absence of parental approval.
The European Union initially took a similar approach. However, in 2020, the European Commission presented two legislative proposals: The Digital Services Act (DSA) and the Digital Markets Act (DMA). Both proposals were enacted in July 2022. The DSA entered into force on 17 February 2024, the DMA in March 2024. This legislation can be summarized in the following four objectives, articulated by MEPs:
Violators could face a complete ban in Europe or fines of up to 6% of global sales. Such content moderation requires extensive investment by platform providers. Enforcement resources may not be sufficient to ensure compliance.
The DSA allows a country to require information to be deleted that is illegal only in that jurisdiction. According to Patrick Breyer from the German Pirate Party, a problem could arise from the Hungarian government requesting a video to be deleted that is critical of Victor Orban, as he foresaw the potential for such determinations to be applied EU-wide.
2018 Nobel Laureate Paul Romer advocated taxing negative externalities of social media platforms. Similar to a carbon tax – negative social effects could be compensated for by a financial levy on the platforms. Assuming that the tax did not deter the actions that produced the externalities, the revenue raised could be used to address them. However, consensus has yet to emerge on how to measure or mitigate the harms, nor to craft a tax, .
Another proposal is to invoke competition law. The idea is to restrict the platforms' market power by controlling mergers ex ante and tightening the law. This would be achieved through a supranational enforcement mechanism and the deterrent effect of high fines.
In a 2024 opinion piece, Megan Moreno and Jenny Radesky, professors of pediatrics, wrote about the need for "nuanced" policy. They regarded access which is contingent upon parental consent as harmful. They commented that a focus on increasing age restrictions "may serve to distract from making sure platforms are following guidelines and best practices for all ages".
In June 2024, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for social media platforms to contain a warning about the impact they have on the mental health of young people.
The business model of most social media platforms is based on selling slots to advertisers. Platforms provide access to data about each user, which allows them to deliver ads that are individually relevant to them. This strongly incents platforms to arrange their content so that users view as much content as possible, increasing the number of ads that they see. Platforms such as X add paid user subscriptions in part to reduce their dependence on advertising revenues.
The enormous reach and impact of social media has naturally led to a stream of criticism, debate, and controversy. Criticisms include platform capabilities, content moderation and reliability, impact on concentration, mental health, content ownership, and the meaning of interactions, and poor cross-platform interoperability, decrease in face-to-face interactions, cyberbullying, sexual predation, particularly of children, and child pornography.
In 2007 Andrew Keen wrote, "Out of this anarchy, it suddenly became clear that what was governing the infinite monkeys now inputting away on the Internet was the law of digital Darwinism, the survival of the loudest and most opinionated. Under these rules, the only way to intellectually prevail is by infinite filibustering."
Social media has become a regular source of news and information. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll reported roughly 70% of users regularly get news from social media, despite the presence of fake news and misinformation. Platforms typically do not take responsibility for content accuracy, and many do not vet content at all, although in some cases, content the platform finds problematic is deleted or access to it is reduced. Content distribution algorithms otherwise typically ignore substance, responding instead to the contents' virality.
In 2018, researchers reported that fake news spread almost 70% faster than truthful news on X. Social media bots on social media increase the reach of both true and false content and if wielded by bad actors misinformation can reach many more users. Some platforms attempt to discover and block bots, with limited success. Fake news seems to receive more user engagement, possibly because it is relatively novel, engaging users' curiosity and increasing spread. Fake news often propagates in the immediate aftermath of an event, before conventional media are prepared to publish.
Malcolm Gladwell considers the role of social media in revolutions and protests to be overstated. He concluded that while social media makes it easier for activists to express themselves, that expression likely has no impact beyond social media. What he called "high-risk activism" involves strong relationships, coordination, commitment, high risks, and sacrifice. Gladwell claimed that social media are built around weak ties and argues that "social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires." According to him, "Facebook activism succeeds not by motivating people to make a real sacrifice, but by motivating them to do the things that people do when they are not motivated enough to make a real sacrifice."
Disputing Gladwell's theory, a 2018 survey reported that people who are politically expressive on social media are more likely to participate in offline political activity.
Social media content is generated by users. However, content ownership is defined by the Terms of Service to which users agree. Platforms control access to the content, and may make it available to third parties.
Although platform's terms differ, generally they all give permission to utilize users' copyrighted works at the platform's discretion.
After its acquisition by Facebook in 2012, Instagram revealed it intended to use content in ads without seeking permission from or paying its users. It then reversed these changes, with then-CEO Kevin Systrom promising to update the terms of service.
Privacy rights advocates warn users about the collection of their personal data. Information is captured without the user's knowing consent. Data may be applied to law enforcement or other governmental purposes. Information may be offered for third party use.
Young people are prone to sharing personal information that can attract predators.
While social media users claim to want to keep their data private, their behavior does not reflect that concern, as many users expose significant personal data on their profiles.
In addition, platforms collect data on user behaviors that are not part of their personal profiles. This data is made available to third parties for purposes that include targeted advertising.
A 2014 Pew Research Center survey reported that 91% of Americans "agree" or "strongly agree" that people have lost control over how personal information is collected and used. Some 80% of social media users said they were concerned about advertisers and businesses accessing the data they share on social media platforms, and 64% said the government should do more to regulate advertisers. In 2019, UK legislators criticized Facebook for not protecting certain aspects of user data.
In 2019 the Pentagon issued guidance to the military, Coast Guard and other government agencies that identified "the potential risk associated with using the TikTok app and directs appropriate action for employees to take in order to safeguard their personal information." As a result, the military, Coast Guard, Transportation Security Administration, and Department of Homeland Security banned the installation and use of TikTok on government devices.
In 2020 The US government attempted to ban TikTok and WeChat from the States over national security concerns. However, a federal court blocked the move. In 2024, the US Congress passed a law directing TikTok's parent company ByteDance to divest the service or see the service banned from operating in the US. The company sued, challenging the constitutionality of the ban. The ban was upheld as constitutional.
Research suggests that social media platforms trigger a cycle of compulsive behavior, which reinforces addictive patterns and makes it harder for individuals to break the cycle.
Various lawsuits have been brought regarding social media addiction, such as the Multi-District Litigation alleging harms caused by social media addiction on young users.
Whether to restrict the use of phones and social media among young people has been debated since smartphones became ubiquitous. A study of Americans aged 12–15, reported that teenagers who used social media over three hours/day doubled their risk of negative mental health outcomes, including depression and anxiety. Platforms have not tuned their algorithms to prevent young people from viewing inappropriate content. A 2023 study of Australian youth reported that 57% had seen disturbingly violent content, while nearly half had regular exposure to sexual images. Further, youth are prone to misuse social media for cyberbullying.
As result, phones have been banned from some schools, and some schools in the US have blocked social media websites.
Intense discussions are taking place regarding the imposition of certain restrictions on children's access to social media. It is argued that using social media at a young age brings with it many problems. For example, according to a survey conducted by Ofcom, the media regulator in the UK, 22% of children aged 8-17 lie about being over 18 on social media. According to a system implemented in Norway, more than half of nine-year-olds and the vast majority of 12-year-olds spend time on social media. A series of measures have begun to be taken across Europe to prevent the risks caused by such problems. The countries that have taken concrete steps in this regard are Norway and France. Since June 2023, France has started requiring social media platforms to verify the ages of their users and to obtain parental consent for those under the age of 15. In Norway, there is a minimum age requirement of 13 to access social media. The Online Safety Law in the UK has given social media platforms until mid-2025 to strengthen their age verification systems.
Social media often features in political struggles. In some countries, Internet police or secret police monitor or control citizens' use of social media. For example, in 2013 some social media was banned in Turkey after the Taksim Gezi Park protests. Both X and YouTube were temporarily suspended in the country by a court's decision. A law granted immunity to Telecommunications Directorate (TİB) personnel. The TİB was also given the authority to block access to specific websites without a court order. Yet TİB's 2014 blocking of X was ruled by the constitutional court to violate free speech.
While the dominant social media platforms are not interoperable, open source protocols such as ActivityPub have been adopted by platforms such as Mastodon, GNU social, Diaspora, and Friendica. They operate as a loose federation of mostly volunteer-operated servers, called the Fediverse. However, in 2019, Mastodon blocked Gab from connecting to it, claiming that it spread violent, right-wing extremism.
In December 2019, X CEO Jack Dorsey advocated an "open and decentralized standard for social media". He joined Bluesky to bring it to reality.
A number of commentators and experts have argued that social media companies have incentives that to maximize user engagement with sensational, emotive and controversial material that discourages a healthy discourse that democracies depend on. Zack Beauchamp of Vox Media calls it an authoritarian medium because of how it is incentivized to stir up hate and division that benefits aspiring autocrats. The Economist describes social media as vulnerable to manipulation by autocrats. Informed dialogue, a shared sense of reality, mutual consent and participation can all suffer due to the business model of social media. Political polarization can be one byproduct. This can have implications for the likelihood of political violence. Siva Vaidhyanathan argues for a range of solutions including privacy protections and enforcing anti-trust laws. Andrew Leonard describes Pol.is as one possible solution to the divisiveness of traditional discourse on social media that has damaged democracies, citing the use of its algorithm to instead prioritize finding consensus.
According to LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, the use of effective social media marketing techniques includes not only celebrities, corporations, and governments, but also extremist groups. The use of social media by ISIS and Al-Qaeda has been used to influence public opinion where it operates and gain the attention of sympathizers. Social media platforms and encrypted-messaging applications have been used to recruit members, both locally and internationally. Platforms have endured backlash for allowing this content. Extreme nationalist groups, and more prominently, US right-wing extremists have used similar online tactics. As many traditional social media platforms banned hate speech, several platforms became popular among right-wing extremists to carry out planning and communication including of events; these application became known as "Alt-tech". Platforms such as Telegram, Parler, and Gab were used during the January 6 United States Capitol attack, to coordinate attacks. Members shared tips on how to avoid law enforcement and their plans on carrying out their objectives; some users called for killing law enforcement officers and politicians.
Social media content, persists unless the user deletes it. After a user dies, unless the platform is notified, their content remains. Each platform has created guidelines for this situation. In most cases on social media, the platforms require a next-of-kin to prove that the user is deceased, and give them the option of closing the account or maintaining it in a 'legacy' status.