Devil's Advocate: Should Social Media Be Illegal?

NO: Petra Pender

Social media has the power to destroy, but it also has the power to create. The arts and creativity have never been more accessible in the field of human history. Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, Chappell Roan —  all household names who got their start posting online. In an era where nepo babies dominate Hollywood, social media can level the playing field, widening access to people from all backgrounds, not just those with the right surname. 

Although I’ll be the first to admit that social media has become an increasingly toxic place, I’d argue that’s more about its execution than the concept. 

Let’s put it this way: I have a Diet Coke addiction. That doesn’t mean that Diet Coke is necessarily a bad beverage, but rather that I, the consumer, have cultivated an unhealthy relationship with it. You can’t pin that one on Big Soda. The same goes for social media; we have too rapidly normalised the absolute extreme of consumption, enabled largely by lockdown and isolation. 

It’s time to review our toxic relationship with TikTok and Instagram reels and set some boundaries.  

We’ve all normalised doomscrolling, factoring in up to hours into daily life to sit and watch minute-long clips indefinitely. But let’s remember that this is a recent development in the already bite-sized history of the online world. 

As is our nature, we too readily focus on the negative. We’re forgetting the basic point of social media: to communicate. Being at uni and in several long-distance friendships, it’s easy to feel up to date with all the relevant information from my darling friends’ lives. I don’t want to have to send smoke signals to Glasgow to find out how my pal’s test went, and thanks to Snapchat, I’ll never have to. We can feel spiritually with one another despite the insurmountable obstacle of the X59 between us. Through social media, we’re blessed with a constant connection to our friends. Can anyone name a richer joy in this world than texting your best friend after running into someone funny, particularly in this tiny town? Debriefs alone are ample reason to keep social media alive.

As double-edged as this sword may be, we are lucky enough to have a constant record of our existence. In my whole life, I’ve seen maybe two pictures of my paternal grandfather (not being lucky enough to have coinciding lifespans). I know my grandchildren and great-grandchildren will never face that issue. If anything, they might be overwhelmed by the sheer choice of pictures they’ll be able to see of Granny — lucky them. To be able to archive our lives and take a scroll down memory lane whenever desired is a privilege no previous generation has ever had. Reminiscing about the good days on the dark ones is surely a ray of light bright enough to outshine even the darkest shadow of Discord.

On a more serious level, social platforms go a long way to making people feel less alone. Madeline Argy, the podcaster and model who got started on TikTok, once said that social media is beautiful because people can have the most original lived experiences that they feel alone in or embarrassed of, only to go online and realise they’re not alone. And, in a world constantly plagued by division, isn’t this sense of belonging what we all crave?

YES: Adrian Hanlon

Proponents of social media seldom argue that it has a net positive effect. After all, it’s hard to paint ‘doomscrolling’ and ‘brainrot’ in a favourable light, and its role in spiking anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia, and authoritarianism (to name a few) makes laughable the notion that social media is anything but a plague. Nevertheless, proponents still possess one prima facie good argument. That is, that freedom is a foundational principle of all democratic societies, and curtailing it to ban social media would constitute an impermissible government overreach.

They forget, however, that freedom isn’t the only democratic principle; we also care about equality, flourishing, and harm prevention, and every democracy implements laws in pursuit of these ends. Furthermore, laws that curtail freedom in one way can promote it in others. For example, prohibiting murder leaves me less free to kill people, but it also leaves me safer and thereby freer to pursue my goals without fear. Banning social media is justified in both these ways: for preventing harm and promoting other freedoms.

To begin, those who defend social media based on free speech ignore its true purpose in democracies. Free speech allows us to convince, be convinced, and thus influence our societies. And how does social media promote these goals? By algorithmically shunting us into political echo chambers, driving us to the extremes of either wing, and segregating us from the so-called “other side.” Clearly, this is not an engine for democratic discourse.

“Yet,” you might counter, “even if it’s not free speech as we’d like it, social media is democracy-building.” As evidence, you might cite the Nepalese, who overthrew their government via protests organised online and who elected a new one via Discord.

There are a few things to say here. Firstly, Nepal teaches that any social media ban must be implemented carefully and for the right reasons, and not against a background of corruption. Secondly, Nepal is an exception to the rule. Rising authoritarianism on the right and silencing of critics via cancel culture on the left demonstrate how both wings have used social media as anti-democratic, free-speech-silencing platforms. Lastly, people have been toppling governments without social media for millennia, so I fail to see how this incident acts as a defence of Instagram reels.

Finally, social media is detrimental to a different sort of freedom, the freedom that relates to autonomous action. In our own lives, we want to feel like we have control, and addictions are a major obstacle to that autonomy. Since social media consumes so much of our time — 4.8 hours/day on average for US teens — and because its effects are so pervasive, this addiction appears to be one of society’s most widespread and nefarious. Furthermore, given that we’re already accustomed to laws aimed at curbing addiction — drug laws, sugar taxes, etc. — and we tend to support laws that protect children — no underage drinking — why shouldn’t we endorse a similar law that restricts social media? 

The answer: we should. For no just society can, in good conscience, leave its children to suffer an epidemic of harm and addiction. No just society can allow itself to be turned into a hateful, undemocratic, and insular landscape. And no just society can do it for the sake of the few, who make billions off the suffering of the many.

Illustration by Eloise Zhang