Supporters say it connects billions of people and gives everyone a voice. Critics point to misinformation, hate and harm to young people's mental health.
Social media are apps and websites, such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, where people share posts, photos and videos and react to what others share. At the start of 2025 there were 5.24 billion social media user identities worldwide, about 63.9% of the world's population, and the typical internet user spent 2 hours and 21 minutes a day on social media.1
In the United States, 84% of adults say they use YouTube and 71% use Facebook, according to a 2025 Pew Research Center survey.2 Teenagers are even more connected. Up to 95% of Americans aged 13 to 17 use a social media platform, and more than a third say they use social media “almost constantly.”6
Social media's political power became clear in 2011, when protests swept Egypt and Tunisia. In the week before Egypt's president Hosni Mubarak resigned, tweets about political change in Egypt rose from 2,300 to 230,000 a day. “Social media became a critical part of the toolkit for greater freedom,” said University of Washington researcher Philip Howard.3 Since then, the #MeToo hashtag, used to share stories of abuse, was posted more than 19 million times on Twitter in less than a year after October 2017,10 and the 2014 ALS Ice Bucket Challenge raised over $115 million for the ALS Association.12
The same tools can spread hate. More than 700,000 Rohingya people fled a military campaign in Myanmar in 2017, and in 2018 UN investigators said Facebook had played a “determining role” in the crisis.45 In 2019, a terrorist streamed his attack on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, live for 17 minutes. Fifty-one people were killed, and Facebook deleted 1.5 million videos of the shootings in the first 24 hours.2122
Worries about young people have grown too. In 2023 the US Surgeon General warned that teens who spend more than three hours a day on social media face double the risk of symptoms of depression and anxiety.6 In 2021, former Facebook employee Frances Haugen told the US Senate she believed the company's products “harm children, stoke division, and weaken our democracy.”7
Yet many young people describe real benefits. In a 2022 Pew survey, 80% of US teens said social media made them feel more connected to what is going on in their friends' lives, and 67% said it made them feel they have people who can support them through tough times.8 After reviewing the research in 2023, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine said there is “not enough evidence to say that social media causes changes in adolescent health” across the whole population.18
So the debate turns on a few big questions. Do connection, free expression and new opportunities outweigh misinformation, hate and harm to mental health? Are the problems caused by social media itself, or by the way companies design it to keep people scrolling? And who should fix them: users, parents, companies or governments?
Most debates on social media are won or lost on these four questions.
Both sides cite the same research and read it differently.
The same openness that lets activists speak lets liars speak too.
This decides who should be held responsible.
Almost everyone agrees there are both. The question is the weighing.
The US: In October 2023, dozens of states sued Meta, alleging it designed features that “purposefully addict children and teens.”26 In January 2025 the Supreme Court unanimously upheld a law requiring TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, to sell the app's US version or face a ban. The Court noted that TikTok serves more than 170 million Americans.28
The European Union: Under the Digital Services Act, platforms with over 45 million users in the EU must assess and reduce “systemic risks” such as illegal content and threats to elections and public health.27
Australia: From 10 December 2025, under-16s can no longer have accounts on age-restricted platforms such as Snapchat, TikTok, X and YouTube.29
New Zealand and France: After the Christchurch attack, the two countries launched the Christchurch Call in May 2019, a commitment by governments and online companies to eliminate terrorist and violent extremist content online.22
Debate tip: comparing countries is useful evidence on both sides. Pro can argue that most governments are choosing to regulate social media, not abolish it; Con can argue that so many new laws show how serious the harms have become.
For class or club discussion. There are no right answers; ask for reasons and evidence.
Anyone can suggest improvements. An editor checks every suggestion and source before it's added, and you're credited by name.