Is Social Media Still “Social”?

🕒 2 min read.

When social media emerged in the early 2000s, it felt revolutionary. Platforms like Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter promised global connection, free expression, and a new kind of community. You could share your thoughts, find your tribe, and stay connected across borders.

Two decades later, the question is unavoidable: is social media still “social”?

1. From Connection to Curation

Originally, social media was about relationships — digital town squares where you could speak, listen, and belong. Today, it often feels like a carefully staged exhibition.

Algorithms reward visibility, not authenticity.
We no longer post to connect — we post to perform.
Influencers replace friends, engagement replaces empathy, and validation becomes currency.

The social element has become transactional — a cycle of attention, comparison, and monetization.

2. The Business Behind “Social”

Behind the scenes, every click, like, and scroll fuels a trillion-dollar data economy.
Platforms that once promised free expression now thrive on surveillance capitalism, harvesting personal data to sell to advertisers or feed AI models.

As privacy scholar Shoshana Zuboff notes in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, “You are not the customer; you are the product.”

Laws like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in Europe and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) in the U.S. attempt to limit misuse of personal data. Yet enforcement lags behind technology’s pace, and users often agree to terms they barely read.

Social media may still connect us, but it does so at a cost — our privacy, autonomy, and, sometimes, our dignity.

3. The Legal Reality of Digital Speech

The promise of free speech on social media comes with a caveat: speech online is rarely free from consequence.
Employers, governments, and courts now treat social media content as public evidence.

In 2021, multiple cases across the U.K. and U.S. saw employees fired for social media posts deemed discriminatory or reputationally harmful.
In Elonis v. United States (2015), the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed that online threats, even on social platforms, can constitute criminal conduct.
In the U.K., defamation suits increasingly cite tweets, Facebook posts, and even emojis as evidence of harm.

In other words, your online words live in both the digital and legal worlds.

4. Reclaiming the “Social”

Despite all this, social media doesn’t have to remain cynical or corrosive. It still offers extraordinary tools for education, justice, and advocacy — from the #MeToo movement to global climate activism.

But meaningful connection requires awareness.
We must reclaim the “social” by making space for empathy, truth, and accountability.
That means understanding not just how we use these platforms — but how they use us.

5. The Law, the User, and the Future

The future of social media will depend on a delicate balance between regulation, responsibility, and digital literacy.
Laws like the EU’s Digital Services Act (2024) and the UK’s Online Safety Act are early attempts to create accountability, combat misinformation, and protect users from algorithmic harm.

But the law can only do so much.
Ultimately, every user plays a role in shaping what “social” means — whether we use these spaces to divide, or to understand.

Conclusion
Social media hasn’t stopped being social — it’s just become something else: part marketplace, part courtroom, part mirror.
Whether it remains a tool for connection or control will depend not only on lawmakers and tech giants, but on each of us — what we post, what we share, and what we choose to ignore.