Can social media help save democracy?

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This article is the winning entry in the 2025 FT Schools blog competition, run in partnership with the Political Studies Association and ShoutOut UK. Details of our free schools access programme are here.

Can social media help save democracy? This question brings up three critical elements: ‘social media’, ‘help save’, and ‘democracy’. Let’s take them in reverse order.

Democracy, even in its etymological roots, is inseparable from the people. One habit I picked up from the French educational system — partly to impress teachers, but mostly to understand ideas better — is to look at the origins of words.

Democracy comes from the Greek demokratia: demos, meaning the people, and kratos, meaning power. The agoras of ancient Greece — those lively, chaotic marketplaces filled with debate, gossip, and intrigue — are widely seen as the cradle of democratic practice. There is no reason to imagine that modern democracy should be sterile, polite, or conflict-free. On the contrary, democracy thrives on pluralism, dispute, and active engagement.

For the majority of my generation — and an ever-growing segment of the electorate — that engagement happens online. Social media has become the new agora. It is hard to envision a functioning democracy today that does not involve these digital spaces. Many politicians, activists, and civic leaders recognised this early on and embraced social media as their default political arena.

But does democracy really need saving? Before jumping into any grand rescue operation, we should ask: what exactly are we trying to save? And from what? Democracy, with all its flaws, remains the most successful system humanity has devised for achieving collective goals through consent. Yes, it is under pressure globally. Yes, it has faltered in some areas. Yet, if given a choice, most people across the globe would still choose to live in a democracy.

Ironically, it is often those who lack that choice who cling most fervently to its promise — they know first-hand what the alternative looks like. There is a sobering paradox: in democracies, not knowing life without freedom is both a blessing and a blind spot. It is fortunate, but it can also obscure the reality that freedoms are not universal and often come at great human cost elsewhere.

And what about social media in all of this? Social media needs democracy as much — perhaps more — than democracy needs social media. In authoritarian states, social media is often restricted or banned. Let’s be clear: those are not democracies.

In contrast, content moderation and transparency requirements — being implemented in many democracies — are regulatory measures, not acts of censorship. These rules aim to safeguard democratic discourse, not silence it. Democracies do not systematically block platforms, surveil citizens, or flood the public square with state propaganda. These freedoms are precisely what allow social media to flourish.

What democracy needs most today is not rescue from external enemies or even from its own failings — though both threats are real — but to regain its mojo: the drive and clarity to argue its case in the global arena of competing ideologies. It needs to reclaim its voice in the modern agora. Social media, for all its flaws, is a good place to start.

Laura Barani is a student at Taipei European School