The pros and cons of social media
Building connections, revolutionizing news and expanding horizons vs. concerns around mental health, fake news and privacy
Social media has grown from its infancy in the early 2000s into a ubiquitous part of most people's lives. What began as a way for people to connect with each other has evolved into a variety of platforms where people can get news, share ideas and even make a living. But from the beginnings of Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to the second wave of platforms like Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok, people have had differing opinions on the true nature of social media.
Pro: maintain connections
One of the biggest positives of social media is the way it brings people together. These sites "play an important role in the establishment of friendships and the everyday back and forth of peer relationships," said the Pew Research Center. Social media has grown from a small web into a "vast, informal network of online venues," said American Public University.
As new platforms developed, so did the way in which people used them. The shift was "almost invisible, but it had enormous consequences," said The Atlantic. "Instead of facilitating the modest use of existing connections — largely for offline life (to organize a birthday party, say) — social software turned those connections into a latent broadcast channel," and all at once, "billions of people saw themselves as celebrities, pundits and tastemakers." Today, social media's uses range from family celebrations to sports clubs, hobbies, fundraisers and more, said American Public.
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Con: depression and anxiety
The impact on mental health, especially among children and adolescents, has long dominated debate around the use of social media. Numerous studies have found links between heavy social media use at a young age and negative self-esteem, body dysmorphia and higher psychological distress. This is especially true among girls, with the UK government moving to introduce the Online Safety Act in 2022 to safeguard children from the effects of social media-triggered depression. In the U.S., Congress has also introduced the Kids Online Safety Act, which would force social media platforms to "exercise reasonable care" when creating features meant for children.
Experts have raised concerns about how social media use activates the reward circuits in the brain, which can cause addiction, said USA Today; those with a history of trauma are particularly vulnerable. At least 15 children under 13 who tried to participate in the TikTok viral "blackout challenge" died, said Vox. "While pursuing the dream that TikTok dangled in front of them — becoming an overnight superstar — many more have become burnt out, disillusioned or otherwise hurt."
The risks to mental health led former U.S. Surgeon General Vivek H. Murthy to call for a "surgeon general's warning label on social media platforms" in an op-ed for The New York Times. Platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and X can create "significant mental health harms for adolescents," said Murthy. The excessive screen time that comes with social media use is also "associated with a higher incidence of dementia" later in life, according to a recent study from the American Journal of Preventative Medicine.
Concerns about the negative impact of social media on the mental health of young users led Australia to pass the first ever social media ban for kids under 16, which was enacted in December 2025. Several other countries are now looking to follow in Australia's footsteps, including Spain, which announced plans for a similar ban in February, and France, whose National Assembly backed legislation to ban children under 15 years old in January.
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Pro: changed politics and news
For all the talk of social media as a toxic cesspit, "it has also encouraged young people to vote, to engage in local politics, and to organize — sometimes against TikTok itself," said Vox. It has revolutionized the way people receive information, forever democratizing news. It has changed politics by ushering in Brexit and Donald Trump but also by helping those living in repressive regimes communicate and mobilize. The Arab Spring was made possible by social media and it is the front line of the communication battle raging in Russia and Ukraine today. Social media has additionally helped highlight conditions in the ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Iran.
The importance of social media in politics and news was further solidified by the prominent role it played in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Despite the fact that she lost, former Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign showed a deft hand in navigating the internet's social sphere, adopting many of the memes made about her and using them advantageously. Podcasters, streamers and influencers also emerged as the faces of the digital news cycle last year; this cohort of digital entertainers became a "source of news for a significant number of Americans, especially when it comes to politics," said NPR.
Con: cognitive overload
"Social media can be mentally draining," said Matthew Pittman, an assistant professor of advertising and public relations at the University of Tennessee, in The Conversation. Citing recent experiments on how social media affects behavior, he said: "You are more likely to be influenced by a high number of likes on posts — even to the point of clicking on ads for products you don't need or want." Yet the effect of "cognitive overload" can result in more than just buying things you do not need.
The endless access to information is perhaps of greatest concern for children, said Adam Brown, a clinical assistant professor in the department of child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, to USA Today. As a 2023 study published in JAMA Pediatrics shows, checking social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram too often can even affect how the brain develops in early adolescence, with students who checked social media habitually displaying differences in brain development related to emotions, motivation and cognitive control. There doesn't appear to be any slowing down of this trend, as smart phone users "check their phones close to 85 times a day" on average, according to Psychology Today, spending about five hours daily on the device.
The increasing popularity of short-form content, inspired by the success of TikTok, has also led to concerns about the attention span of children and teenagers. The so-called TikTok brain phenomenon is built around the constant exposure to dopamine-spiking short videos, which have slowly become the norm across other platforms, including YouTube shorts. And given the large swath of content available on social media, the "exposure to a wide range of emotions, from joy and inspiration to anger and sadness, all within a short span, can be mentally taxing," said Calm.
Pro: provides education
It is important to stress the educational and entertainment aspects of social media, said Fox News. "A lot of people end up discovering new musicians, styles of clothing they want to try out, or even facts about the world that they didn't know before." During times of great societal strain, such as the Covid-19 pandemic, social media has inspired people "to make fun iced coffee drinks, to pursue careers in arts and entertainment, to romanticize their lives, to feel more positively about their own bodies," said Vox.
There are many ways children can learn using social media. This ranges from how "students interact with content to how educators design and share their learning materials," said the British School of Barcelona. Social media can also facilitate "collaborative learning" by letting kids "work together on projects and assignments at anytime and from anywhere," as opposed to being limited to school hours. Despite controversy over classroom use, the "real issue is not smart phones themselves but how teachers guide their use," said Forbes.
Con: privacy concerns
There is a growing concern over privacy and security when it comes to social media. The Cambridge Analytica scandal of 2018 revealed how data from platforms such as Facebook was being manipulated for political gain by third parties.
Concerns about TikTok's links to the Chinese state resulted in a law temporarily banning the platform the day before Trump was inaugurated for the second time. The new president swiftly extended the law's effective date with an executive order and suggested he would consider doing so again. Under the timeline set by Trump, TikTok's China-based parent company, ByteDance, was given "75 days beyond the initial January deadline to divest from the popular platform amid national security concerns," said The Hill. Longstanding negotiations continued until October 2025, when the U.S. and China announced a deal for TikTok's sale.
The deal closed in January 2026, with the joint venture acquiring TikTok's U.S. assets formally established and the leadership team announced "one day before the deadline" set by Trump, CNN said. The majority American-owned joint venture will "operate under defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users," the group said in a statement. The agreement provides for "American and global investors to hold 80.1% of the venture while ByteDance will own 19.9%," Reuters said. The three managing investors of the new entity, TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, are cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based investment firm MGX, who each hold 15%.
TikTok "will now be owned by a group of Great American Patriots and Investors, the Biggest in the World," Trump said in a Truth Social post praising the deal. He thanked Chinese President Xi Jinping "for working with us and, ultimately, approving the deal."
But "does the recent deal truly resolve the national security risks originally cited by Congress to justify the TikTok ban?" said Scott Young at Harvard Law Today. "In my view, no, and, in some ways, it's made the problem even worse," said Timothy Edgar, a Harvard Law lecturer and expert on cybersecurity, to the outlet. Creating U.S. TikTok "leaves many existing threats unresolved while exposing users to additional privacy risks," said Young. The TikTok deal also "encapsulates every abusive practice of the Trump administration — secrecy, unprecedented claims of executive power and noncompliance with the law," said Adam Connor at the Center for American Progress. The American people may ultimately "be left with more questions than answers about what actually transpired."
Justin Klawans has worked as a staff writer at The Week since 2022. He began his career covering local news before joining Newsweek as a breaking news reporter, where he wrote about politics, national and global affairs, business, crime, sports, film, television and other news. Justin has also freelanced for outlets including Collider and United Press International.