A majority of Americans believe that social media is harming children and two new court cases recently came to the same conclusion.

We have been studying social media for over the past decade and found that the harms of social media extend far beyond kids.

“Facebook is optimizing for content that gets engagement or reaction. Its own research is showing the content that is hateful, that is divisive, that is polarizing—it is easier to inspire people to anger than other emotions.” 

When social media technology was introduced to the Marubo tribe deep in the Amazon via access to Elon Musk’s Starlink it revealed the same basic pattern we have seen over and over again in many studies.

Members of this small community quickly became obsessed with social media to the extend that the community had to shut down access to the internet each day to ensure they would hunt and gather enough food for their own survival. More strikingly, it also spurred the kind polarization we saw in our American samples.

We summarized our research on how social media impacts society in our recent newsletter: