How Harmful Is Social Media? | The New Yorker

How Social Media Brings Out the Worst in Us

A new book argues that social media does more harm than good and we might be happier and healthier using it less.

The Danger of Exaggerating the Political Importance of Social Media - Cal Newport

The Pew Research Center recently released a new study on American Twitter use. As Jennifer Rubin reported in the Washington Post, one of the most ... Read more

Why Protecting Kids from Social Media May Make Things Worse — Douglas Rushkoff

I’m supposed to give a talk next week about kids and social media and the need for more media literacy education, more regulation of platforms, and more substantive discussion about how to keep our kids from media-induced self-harm. The whole event is well-meaning, but is characterized by a sense of worry and protection. And for some reason, after years of making those sorts of arguments in my articles and documentaries, I have a strong impulse to pivot the other way.

People Across the Globe Increasingly Say Social Media Is Harming Democracy

Most think social media leads to manipulation and division, but they also say it informs people and gives them a voice in politics.

Measuring The Health of Our Public Conversations - Cortico

By Deb Roy, Eugene Yi, Russell Stevens Published: March 1, 2018 The Internet and social media have transformed modern society in many positive ways by connecting us to the world’s information, enabling social connections that transcend space and time, and giving everyone a voice. Within this transformation, social media have become an essential part of

Mark Zuckerberg Says Social Media Is Over | The New Yorker

archived 23 Apr 2025 21:28:49 UTC

Social Media Experiences Across Nearly 2 Years Since Launching the Social Media Index

With new data through January 2025, we find that social media use is decreasing, bad experiences are mostly holding steady, and positive experiences are increasing on some platforms

The Noisy Room

Only 3% of social media users post toxic content — but Americans estimate 43%. An interactive essay.

Do social media threaten democracy?

Facebook, Google and Twitter were supposed to save politics as good information drove out prejudice and falsehood. Something has gone very wrong

Social Media Is Now Parasocial Media

When practitioners used the term “social media” to describe the internet tools that emerged in the mid-aughts, they were giving a name to the kinds of platforms and protocols that allowed people to socialize with friends and communities of interest by using digital technologies. Twenty years later, users of social media are far more likely to scroll than post – and the content that they consume is often strategically produced and algorithmically curated. In this essay, I argue that the very essence of social media has changed. To more effectively interrogate what we are witnessing, we need to stop presuming that these tools are “social media” and begin recognizing that they are now “parasocial media.” Doing so raises new questions about digitally mediated sociality, not to mention the politics and governance of these platforms.

The limits of social media as a source of political information during routine and crisis times across 17 countries

Recent studies on political knowledge suggest people learn little about political events and societal issues from social media. Potentially, social media are a more effective source of information ...

Brett Scott (@brettscott)

Marshall McLuhan is famous for his observation that the form of a communication technology can shape our mind and society The age of the printed book, for example, carried with it a particular way of being. Regardless of the differing content of different books, all books required a particular mindset in which a thread is followed from the beginning to the end through an arc I feel the age of social media is like the age of a ripped up book, as if we were surrounded by torn shards and shreds of paper floating like confetti around us. We grab for them, hoping for some tiny insight, but not having any way of knowing where it fits in the overarching narrative This note is one such shard. You can toss it away now

The Interplay of Knowledge Overestimation, Social Media Use, and Populist Ideas: Cross-Sectional and Experimental Evidence From Germany and Taiwan - Niels G. Mede, Adrian Rauchfleisch, Julia Metag, Mike S. Schäfer, 2024

Social media expose users to an abundance of information about various issues. But they also make it difficult for users to assess the quality of this informati...

On Social Media and Its Discontents - Cal Newport

Split Reactions As someone who has publicly criticized the major social media platforms for years, I’ve become familiar with the common arguments surrounding this topic. ... Read more

The Kids Are (Mostly) Alright: New Pew Study Deflates The Social Media Panic

A couple weeks back, Jonathan Haidt published another entry in his ongoing campaign to convince the world that social media is inherently ruining kids’ lives. This one was a victory lap title…