World News

How is Social Media Shaping Political Views? 

By Eloise Marmer ‘28 in Fall 2025

Whether it’s TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, or other platforms, it's fair to say social media has become prevalent in our society. Social media has become so much more than just a tool for communication. It has become a space for political ideologies to evolve and clash. These social media platforms have become an easy way to learn about the political state of our world, and although it’s easy, is it always helpful? What happens when platforms don’t just host political content, but start to shape what users see, think, and believe?

Social media was built to connect people, but as we have learned from Dino Ambrosi and Project Reboot, these algorithms are designed to engage us, and often this engagement can thrive on controversial subjects such as politics. A Tulane experiment found that politically charged content gets more engagement because they found that “people are more likely to engage with content that challenges their views than aligns with them.” Because social media wants us to keep engaging with what it’s feeding us, it will keep serving us more of the same, creating a one-sided political content feed. This isolates viewers from having a diverse political feed and can distort their understanding of political issues by showing only a small piece of the story.

Social media influencers have also begun to emerge as political figures, sharing their opinions and influencing the minds of younger voters. NextGen America did a study on the 2022 voter impact study, one article researching the influence of influencers. They found that 20% of the voters contacted through influencer posts had never voted before the 2022 midterms. Young voters see political information online, which can affect how they vote and if they vote. This shows how influencers can play a vital role in shaping their viewers' political engagement.

Social media isn’t going away anytime soon, but its role in shaping political views isn’t just a side effect; we now see that it is a real function of the algorithm. We are not just consuming this political content; we have to realize that it is consuming us.