While social media is seen as a helpful convenience, it is also quite divisive. It might upset family life and negatively affect young users' mental health as emotionally-charged content splashes one’s feed on a daily basis.
In a 2021 Brookings Institute article titled “How Tech Platforms Fuel U.S. Political Polarization and What Government Can Do About It,” three "scholars" argued that the government needed to monitor Facebook because it contributed to “political polarization." People were forming strong political opinions from social media posts and sharing controversial content. The scholars pointed out that Facebook was showing controversial content frequently because it had a high amount of user engagement, which was crucial for ad revenue the site relied on. Users would be looking at ads while liking or reposting something that was conveniently located next to the ads. With this consideration, they proposed that Facebook “permanently” tweak its algorithm to show less controversial content or risk being fined by the Federal Trade Commission.
Unfortunately, the "U.S. Political Polarization" article presented a strong free-speech issue. While the authors appeared not to want Facebook to block “legitimate political expression,” they also tacitly wanted the platform to block specific political (or otherwise controversial) content or risk being fined. Logically, this censorship could not be free speech. For speech to be truly free, social media has to allow voices of different perspectives (not just one tyrannical opinion) to speak without fear of being blocked or censored. The way the writers worded “legitimate political expression” seemed to allude to left-leaning content only, considering they looked down on conservative political content as “election distrust” and as encouraging “insurrection.” Why was it considered a bad thing to have an accurate idea of how the country’s elections really worked? Were they trying to cover up something?
A 2025 article, “Teens and Social Media Use: What’s the Big Impact?,” by Mayo Clinic, focused on how teens’ social media use might disrupt family life. The article acknowledged that teens often use social media for “self-expression” and “entertainment.” Teens, however, often spend less time meaningfully interacting with their families and become depressed, are bullied, or are more vulnerable to peer pressure. More seriously, some teenagers are even blackmailed. The article provided parents with a list of ways to protect their teens from the more dangerous effects of social media, such as monitoring accounts or setting boundaries.
The final article, “Social Media’s Growing Impact on Our Lives,” written by Summer Allen in 2019, posed an interesting theory about why teens use social media. Allen argued that teens look for friends to interact with online because their parents are too “restrictive," preventing them from experiencing real-world interaction with kids their own age. However, she also acknowledged that social media sometimes tends to replace real-life interaction with peers (more pronounced in users who have addictive personalities) and pointed out that the situation could go both ways.
She suggested that teenagers “may get less hung up on the online/offline dichotomy” than their parents; in other words, social media is just another place to interact with friends. In this worldview, teenagers do not care about the difference between screens and real life. Meanwhile, their parents see a big difference between the two and wish their children would spend more time in the real world. The author, however, seemed aware of the possible dangers awaiting young people online.
This article's suggestion that teens see social media as another place to interact with friends appeared to ignore the vitriol that laced the comment sections online and the censorship of certain content, caused by petty teens or adults misusing certain social media outlets. Most people (young and old) do not want to treat their friends this harshly in person or block out anyone’s ideas (whether or not they agreed or disagreed with those ideas) in conversation. Because people can hide behind a screen, they tend to get away with much worse bullying than they could ever perform in person.
Realistically speaking, teens are too young for many social media platforms. It appeared to be a good idea for websites with a format like Instagram to follow legislation requiring them to disallow underage users.
