Social media

• 1. Introduction

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  Social media now reaches roughly 3.96 billion people on Earth, a figure that climbed from 3.6 billion just two years before 2022. That number represents more than half the global population actively sharing, reacting, and connecting through platforms that did not exist for most of human history. What began as crude text exchanges on university mainframes has grown into a system of interlocking networks that shapes elections, fuels epidemics of misinformation, and determines how teenagers understand their own bodies. The questions worth following are not simply how social media works, but what it does to us, who benefits, and who pays the price.

• 2. From Mainframes to Myspace

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  The PLATO system launched in 1960 at the University of Illinois, and it already carried the seeds of what would become social media. It offered Notes, a message-forum application; TERM-talk, an instant-messaging feature; and Talkomatic, which may have been the first online chat room. ARPANET came online in 1969, and by the late 1970s users were exchanging non-government ideas and developing what one 1982 handbook from MIT's Artificial Intelligence Laboratory called "netiquette."

  Usenet, conceived by Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis in 1979 at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University, is recognized as the first open social media application; it was established in 1980. The precursor to electronic bulletin board systems, called Community Memory, appeared by 1973. Mainstream bulletin board systems arrived in earnest with the Computer Bulletin Board System in Chicago, which launched on the 16th of February 1978. Between the mid-1980s and the mid-1990s, bulletin board systems numbered in the tens of thousands across North America alone.

  In 1991, Tim Berners-Lee integrated HTML hypertext software with the internet, creating the World Wide Web. That breakthrough triggered an explosion of blogs, list servers, and email services, and message forums migrated from bulletin boards to the web, handling far more people simultaneously thanks to cheaper access. The first recognizable social networking site came in the mid-1990s with platforms like Classmates.com and SixDegrees.com. SixDegrees was unique because it was the first online service designed for people to connect using their actual names rather than anonymously. Its name was inspired by the "six degrees of separation" concept, the idea that every person is just six connections away from everyone else. BlackPlanet in 1999 then preceded Friendster and Myspace, and Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter followed in the early 2000s.

• 3. A Different Kind of Transmission

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  Traditional media has always operated on a single-source model: one newspaper delivered to many subscribers, one radio station broadcasting the same programs across a city. Social media flipped that architecture entirely, running on what researchers call a dialogic transmission system, where many sources send to many receivers simultaneously. That structural difference changes who holds power over information.

  By 2015, users were spending 22% of their online time on social networks. Research from the same year found that people with a higher social comparison orientation used social media more heavily than those with low social comparison orientation. A 2019 definition from Merriam-Webster described social media as "forms of electronic communication through which users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content." The American National Institute of Standards and Technology defined it as enabling users to "create and share content or to participate in social networking."

  The category now spans an enormous range of services: blogs, business networks, collaborative projects, enterprise social networks, forums, microblogs, photo sharing, social gaming, video sharing, and virtual worlds. Mobile devices extended all of this further, since users no longer need to be at a desk to participate. Andreas Kaplan sorted mobile social media activity into four types: space-timers, which are location and time-sensitive; space-locators, which are only location-sensitive; quick-timers, which are only time-sensitive; and slow-timers, which are neither. That taxonomy reveals how thoroughly location and immediacy became woven into the way people connect.

• 4. Virality, Bots, and Platform Drift

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  Certain content can spread the way viral infections do, from individual to individual in widening waves. A post from a relatively unknown user can reach vast numbers of people within hours, though virality is far from guaranteed; few posts make that transition. Platforms built specific features to encourage sharing, like the "like" option on Facebook and X, and viral marketing became attractive to businesses because it could achieve widespread coverage at a fraction of traditional advertising costs.

  Bots, which are automated programs that mimic human behavior by liking, commenting, and following, complicated this picture. In 2018, researchers reported that fake news spread almost 70% faster than truthful news on X. Bots amplify both true and false content, and bad actors can use them to push misinformation to far more users than organic spreading would allow. So-called "cyborgs," which are either bot-assisted humans or human-assisted bots, serve purposes from spreading fake news to creating marketing buzz. Sock puppets, where one human operates multiple accounts each pretending to be a different person, represent a related tactic.

  Platforms themselves have converged significantly over time. Facebook launched an integrated video platform in May 2007. Instagram, whose original scope was low-resolution photo sharing, introduced the ability to share quarter-minute 640 by 640 pixel videos, later extended to a minute with increased resolution. Instagram then implemented Stories, short videos that self-destruct after 24 hours, a concept popularized by Snapchat. X, which began as text-based microblogging, later added photo sharing, video sharing, and a media studio for business users modeled on YouTube's Creator Studio. By 2024, social media patent applications in the United States alone exceeded 5,000, with 897 filed in one quarter and 1,674 in another.

• 5. The Adolescent in the Algorithm

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  A 2017 study of almost 6,000 adolescent students found 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 2016 study examining teenage girls found that they manipulate their self-presentation on social media to appear beautiful as viewed by their peers, and when that effort fails to generate responses, self-confidence can decline. A 2018 survey by Common Sense Media found that 45% of American teens ages 13-17 said likes are at least somewhat important, and 26% at least somewhat agreed they feel bad about themselves when nobody responds to their photos.

  A 2017 study on sleep found that blue light from displays and the frequency of checking, rather than the total duration of use, predicted disturbed sleep. People in the highest quartile for weekly social media use experienced the most sleep disturbance. The median number of minutes of use per day in that study was 61. A 2011 study reported that time spent on Facebook was negatively associated with grade point average.

  A study of Americans aged 12-15 found that teenagers who used social media over three hours per day doubled their risk of negative mental health outcomes including depression and anxiety. A 2023 study of Australian youth found that 57% had seen disturbingly violent content online, and nearly half had regular exposure to sexual images. Journalist Maria Ressa called social media "toxic sludge" for increasing distrust among members of society. In 2017, Facebook gave its new emoji reactions five times the weight of the like button in its algorithms, and data scientists at the company confirmed in 2019 that this change had disproportionately boosted toxicity, misinformation, and low-quality news. Algorithms that track user engagement tend to favor content that spurs negative emotions like anger and outrage.

• 6. Governments, Courts, and Regulation

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  In November 2024, Australia passed the Online Safety Amendment (Social Media Minimum Age) Act, banning people under 16 from using most social media platforms, with implementation set for December 2025. Platforms that violated the law faced a financial penalty of AU$49.5 million. TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter fell under the ban, while YouTube and Google Classroom were exempted as platforms deemed to meet educational or health needs.

  In the United States, the Communications Decency Act was enacted in 1996, and Section 230 exempted internet platforms from legal liability for content created by third parties. In 2024, Congress passed a law directing TikTok's parent company, ByteDance, to divest the service or face a ban from operating in the country. The US Supreme Court upheld that ban as constitutional in January 2025. An agreement reached in January 2026 allowed TikTok to continue operating in the US by creating a new American entity called TikTok US Joint Venture. Under that deal, ByteDance retains a 19.9% share of the stock, while investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, and MGX hold the remaining stake.

  The European Union enacted the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act in July 2022. The Digital Services Act entered into force on the 17th of February 2024, and the Digital Markets Act followed in March 2024. Violators of those laws can face a complete ban in Europe or fines of up to 6% of global sales. Courts across multiple countries have also grappled with social media evidence in employment, custody, and disability cases. In a 2014 case in Ontario involving alleged assault during the G20 summit, a court rejected a digital photo posted anonymously online because it carried no metadata verifying its origin.

• 7. Democracy, Extremism, and What Comes Next

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  Jonathan Haidt compared the impact of social media on democratic discourse to the Tower of Babel and the chaos it unleashed. Siva Vaidhyanathan refers to it as "anti-social media" for its effects on loneliness and political polarization, and Audrey Tang uses the same term when describing its impact on democracy. A 2021 Pew Research Center poll found that roughly 70% of social media users regularly get news from the platforms, despite widespread awareness of fake news and misinformation.

  Extremist groups including ISIS and Al-Qaeda have used social media to influence public opinion and recruit members locally and internationally. Platforms such as Telegram, Parler, and Gab were used during the January 6 United States Capitol attack to coordinate actions. Members shared tips on avoiding law enforcement and called for violence against officers and politicians.

  In June 2024, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy called for social media platforms to carry a warning about their impact on the mental health of young people, placing the issue alongside other public health hazards. One proposed structural remedy is Andrew Leonard's description of Pol.is, a platform designed to prioritize finding consensus rather than amplifying division. Most online misinformation, the source notes, originates from a small minority of "superspreaders," but social media's architecture amplifies their reach and influence far beyond what they could achieve alone. Whether that architecture can be redesigned without dismantling the features that make social media useful is the question that researchers, regulators, and platform engineers have not yet answered.