Has Social Media Done More Harm Than Good?

September 1, 2025

Since their invention less than 30 years ago, social media platforms have come to dominate the world. Today, Instagram, YouTube, and other platforms claim billions of users. But our dependence on social media has triggered a debate over its effects on the well-being of individuals and society.

Social media companies—as well as many users—say their platforms promote community by connecting people with shared interests, keeping them in touch with friends and family, and even driving social movements. But others have criticized social media as being addictive by design and for spreading misinformation, stoking division, and causing a teen mental health crisis.

Is social media doing more harm than good for society? An evolutionary biologist and a public policy expert face off on the question.

The harm social media has done to societies far outweighs the good. It has made people lonelier and societies more divided.

Social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok are designed to captivate your attention, even at the expense of your mental health. You’ve probably noticed that the most obnoxious people often get the most attention in online chats. This is because the algorithms that regulate social media content promote the most emotionally charged comments, which tends to amplify negativity and hate speech.

Social media companies do this to maximize revenue. In her testimony before Congress in 2021, former Facebook employee and whistleblower Frances Haugen shared documents showing how engineers designed the algorithm to be addictive to users and to fuel outrage to gin up user involvement. In short, they were monetizing hate.

Social media algorithms turn the rules of society upside down.

The algorithm turns the rules of society upside down. Historically, real-world communities have practiced civility toward strangers and valued personal modesty. If someone was impolite, they were rebuked or ignored—not given a megaphone. But instead of correcting prejudices, social media divides the public into self-reinforcing silos. In 2017, for instance, Facebook algorithms may have fueled a genocide in Myanmar by whipping up hatred against the Rohingya. The far-right German party, AfD, known for its Nazi slogans and trivializing the Holocaust, gained prominence thanks to short videos on TikTok.

No generation has been lonelier, more anxious, or more unhappy than the young people who’ve grown up using social media. Governments in Europe and elsewhere have taken action by closing social media membership to adolescents. Efforts to make social media safer for young people are afoot in the United States too, and for the sake of our society, we should give these efforts our full support.

—NIGEL BARBER
Evolutionary psychologist, author of Doomsday Decoded

Social media is woven into nearly every part of our lives, from how we get news or find jobs to how we influence political change. While critics often highlight its role in misinformation and social polarization, social media has had undeniably positive impacts on society.

Social media has helped strengthen societies by boosting civic participation. Political information used to flow mainly through elite-controlled channels like newspapers or television. Today social media allows people to bypass these gatekeepers and engage with others about politics, government policies, or any other subject of interest. Marginalized groups—such as young people, women, and ethnic minorities—can make their voices heard and build movements that might otherwise have been silenced. During the Arab Spring uprisings in the early 2010s, for example, platforms like Facebook and Twitter were instrumental in mobilizing protests and toppling authoritarian rule in Tunisia and Egypt.

Social media brings people together in a common cause.

This is just one of many instances in which social media has enabled people who may never have had face-to-face contact to discover a community built around a common cause. We know that a strong social network is good for an individual’s health; it’s also good for the health of a society, giving anyone with a device access to information that’s vital to their well-being and connecting them with others with similar needs.

Critics rightly point to the role of social media in spreading misinformation, amplifying hate, and polarizing society. But there are ways we can improve the online space without throwing out its benefits: fact-checking initiatives, digital literacy campaigns, and changes to how algorithms spread information. We’re not going to get rid of social media, so we should focus on improving the ways it has already strengthened society.

—JOHN TADEN
Professor of International Studies and Language, Pepperdine University