By Teagan Revelle, Newswire Intern
Social media has not only changed the way political candidates can advertise and help people to understand their platform, but it has also drastically changed the way that society feels about politics.
Posting on social media is a cost effective and efficient way for political candidates to increase publicity. The easy accessibility of real time analytics alert campaign management teams of what is resonating with users and the large number of young voters who can be easily reached through social media.
Just two decades ago, campaigners were forced to rely on door-to-door conversations, newspaper coverage and TV ads to get the attention of voters. Now, in the age of social media, cell phone usage is a part of daily life.
Anger and misinformation massively skew the political landscape, and social media platforms reward anger and outrage with likes, shares and reposts. This means that in order to get views facts end up getting lost and the truth gets dramatized while social media platforms are quietly making billions off of the chaos.
According to slicktext.com, 57% of Americans say they are addicted to their phone, and many users report an average of five to six hours of daily usage.
Social media had a lot of potential to be a way to connect people, but with the incorporation of algorithms, all of that got lost in the prioritization of engagement over accurate information.
It is because of this prioritization that misinformation thrives and spreads so easily on social media.
X and Meta have both attempted to create fact checking among platforms, but after complaints of inconsistencies and political bias, X and Meta did away with these programs in 2025.
The public is well acquainted with the concept of those algorithms that platforms like TikTok and Instagram use, but the business side of these algorithms is that they are able to predict which posts every individual user is more likely to engage with based on beliefs and previous interactions. This effectively keeps users hooked on the app where they can maximize the number of ads they consume.
As a result of this huge change, social media is no longer “social.” The sole purpose of these platforms is no longer to connect with friends and family. Instead they have become an outlet to share opinions and ideas quickly and consume posts from a personalized algorithm that will keep users on the app. This goal is to keep users consuming information and watching ads for as long as possible so big social media companies can keep making money.
Staff Writer Teagan Revelle defines why it is that users cannot trust that social media has societies social welfare at heart
As these algorithms evolve to only show users what they want to see, the issue of political polarization arises due to the constant reinforcement of pre-existing biases.
This causes problems and a huge contribution to the divide between political groups. When someone is only fed one side of an issue, it gets easier to view those who are on the other side as misinformed or ignorant.
When Facebook introduced the like button in 2009, everything on social media became a popularity contest, because users can be punished or rewarded by anyone for saying something potentially millions of people like or do not like.
It is also at this time that Twitter, now X, released the retweet button. The retweet button then enables any posts that provoke outrage to be spread easily and quickly.
So it is at this time that social media became what social scientist Jonathan Haidt calls an “outrage machine.”
With all of the different conflicting sources and ideas, voters find it difficult to trust any source on social media. Social media companies cannot be trusted to feed users the truth when misinformation can be even more profitable. They have proven their disinterest towards promoting the truth through a lack of effort in pioneering fact-checking technology for these apps, and their silence regarding how much money arguing truly makes them.
Voters should take into consideration the dramatization of news on social media when thinking about voting, and find more reliable sources that do not make money off of their outrage.