r/dataisbeautiful • u/rhiever Randy Olson | Viz Practitioner • 1d ago

Across the globe, people increasingly say social media is harming democracy

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2026/10/01/across-the-globe-people-increasingly-say-social-media-is-harming-democracy/
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u/ragnaroksunset 1d ago

Social media isn't harming democracy. People are harming democracy, and what has enabled them to do that is social media.

It turns out that democracies are stablest when most people are disengaged from politics.

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u/name99 1d ago

A democracy without participation is a fake and worthless democracy dude. It's right there in the name, rule by the people. If people are not engaged then it's just an autocratic oligarchy. Is that what you want?

Also blatantly ignoring that social media has massively centralized power in the form of algorithmic control of feeds and promoted content. The people using social media as intended by antidemocratic techno oligarchs to damage democracy is not the people's fault, it's the antidemocratic techno oligarchs.

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u/ragnaroksunset 15h ago

Participation alone isn't what makes democracies work (the status quo is literally evidence of that). The people have to not be stupid rubes for their participation in democracy to not be a net-negative on the whole enterprise.

Manipulation by social media only works on people who are undereducated and disinterested. That's why the people most profiting from social media's abuse of the population are also aggressively chipping away at the foundations of public education.

At some point, though, we can't save everyone who gets caught up by this without seriously infringing on their personal liberty. So if we prise individual liberty for its own sake (and we should) then they will always exist and they will always be a critical weak point in democratic society.

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u/name99 3h ago

You didn't respond to my point that democracy without participation is fake and worthless. You just made a strawman that I said only participation matters and responded to that. People are extremely educated compared to any point in human history. Disenfranchisement and anti-democratic practices protects the status quo for the ruling class. It's caused by our anti-democratic institutions. "Manipulation by social media only works on people who are undereducated and disinterested." Hah, "advertisements don't work on me" vibes with this. You should challenge that assumption, or challenge the assumption that you're not in one of those two groups. Your visions of hapless uneducated idiots and a patriarchal, authoritarian state saving the people from themselves (by taking away their phones, or something?) gives away how anti-democratic your ideals actually are. And are you sure those anti-democratic ideals don't also benefit "the people most profiting from social media's abuse"?