Social Media Is Poison For Politicians

Author’s note: I initially published this essay in 2021 in my book The Digital Dilemma. Given we are nearing the finish line in the presidential cycle, I thought best to resurface this. The rancor, expediency, and general incompetence that characterizes our ruling class need not be the new status quo, but make no mistake, the politicians are not the ones to blame. In this great nation by the people, the buck stops not at whoever occupies the Resolute Desk but at the conscience of every ordinary citizen who put them there.

There is a new requirement for politicians in this country, which has nothing to do with how old they are, where they were born, or how long they previously held office. No, this requirement is the fact that politicians today must maintain some kind of digital presence. Specifically, they must be on social media.

This is a huge change in the history of politics and has far-reaching implications. In this essay, I want to discuss how social media affects the ruling elite, whose decisions impact the way we live our lives.

In 2020, 98% of senators had a Twitter account and 100% had a Facebook account. It’s safe to assume that by now, every major politician in this country, whether in congress, the executive, or the judicial branch, has a social media presence.

There has been a great deal of attention placed on what politicians have posted on their accounts, especially President Donald Trump, who generated enormous controversy for his tweets which eventually led to him being banned from several prominent platforms. 

But I think it is of equal, if not greater importance, to discuss what politicians read and consume on their accounts, along with what they post. Because they are responsible for making decisions in a complex and messy world, in which there are no clear-cut solutions, but rather nuanced trade-offs. Their decisions are only as good as the information they receive, and if they are getting most of their information from social media, then we have a big problem on our hands.

But before we get into why that is, we first have to understand what the responsibility of a politician is. In the United States, we have a representative democracy, meaning that we elect individuals to make policy decisions for us, rather than making those decisions ourselves. The Founding Fathers established this system to guard against mob rule and the rapid fluctuations of public opinion. James Madison, in Federalist 10, writes: “Hence it is that democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property; and in general have been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths...A republic, by which I mean a government in which a scheme of representation takes place, opens a different prospect and promises the cure for which we are seeking.” 

So in this way, politicians have to balance between two forces—they have to represent the will of the people, while also independently acting according to their best judgment.

Social media, unfortunately, corrupts both of these forces. Let’s examine how it affects the first responsibility: to understand what constituents want and then faithfully represent their interests. 

Traditionally, if a politician wants to understand what the people want, they have several options to choose from. They could analyze poll statistics or other data for an objective understanding of the consensus opinion. Or they could meet with leaders from the community, such as business owners, union heads, clergymen, or school administrators. Or they could have their staffers collect feedback and compile findings into a briefing report. 

But all of these methods have their disadvantages, especially because they are costly and can only be done at a low scale. Unfortunately, this means politicians turn to social media for answers instead. I don’t think they do this explicitly, by creating polls or by setting out to understand which way the wind is blowing on Facebook. But they do so implicitly, by noticing who is discussing what and how many upvotes or favorites certain posts are receiving. They may even notice what things they say garner the most attention and positive approval, versus what things they say get them raked over the coals.

The problem is that social media does not reflect reality. Firstly, the people who are active on social media are not proportionate to the population at large. There has been ample research to show and common sense to understand that certain platforms have more of some groups of people than others. For example, Twitter has a lot of college-educated users, YouTube has a lot of young men, and Facebook has a lot of older people. 

Secondly, it's reasonable to assume that the number of times people post, as well as the number of views their posts get, operates according to the Pareto Principle, otherwise known as the 80/20 rule. This may very well mean that 20% of Twitter users produce 80% of the total tweets, or that 20% of tweets have 80% of all the total favorites and likes. In addition, what compels certain individuals to be the most prolific tweeters could also reflect personalities and emotions not representative of the entire population. For example, it could easily be that the top 20% of Tweeters are in the top 20% of neurotic people, or that 80% of people’s tweets are posted when they are at their top 20% most upset moments. It’s probably impossible to capture these statistics precisely, but as hypotheses, they should make us reflect on how we treat the information on social media.

This result is that politicians fixate on issues that don’t deserve attention. As a side note, I am not a political person. Within the past few years, we’ve collectively gotten into the habit of seeing everything through the lens of politics. Frankly, I’m tired of it, because there are many more important and interesting ways to look at the world. This is why I have no allegiance to a political party and really hope that our generation can become the no-party generation, the generation that thinks for themselves instead of blindly following a political party’s agenda. Now, back to the topic at hand.

If we factor in Russian troll farms, which produce content that has spread all over the internet, it's clear to see that what appears on Twitter is unconnected with what appears in the minds of real people. 

I hope I made a convincing argument about how social media makes it enormously difficult for politicians to distinguish signal from noise and understand what their constituency truly wants. 

Now let’s move on to how social media disrupts the second responsibility of represented officials, which is to act according to what they believe is best for the people they serve, even if the majority of them disagree with their judgment.

The way social media disrupts this responsibility is by providing a space for anyone to send criticism towards the politician while giving the politician an opportunity to read it. Note that this only is a problem if a politician actively manages their account and checks notifications and replies. A lot of high-level politicians are likely shielded from direct comments, but that isn’t always the case. President Trump famously checked his own Twitter feed, even retweeting content and posting himself, and he was the highest-ranking official in the country at the time. 

The problem with feedback and criticism on social media is the scale at which it pours in. If you are a politician and you take a stance on a controversial decision according to your own intuition, you can face thousands of dreadful, hate-filled insults, slurs, and threats. Only the most steel-willed of people can fare this mountain of criticism without caving in. Unfortunately, many do. For example, many politicians had private views regarding the pandemic that were at odds with the ones they shared in public. Even if these views matched what the majority of their constituency believed, they were terrified by the backlash they would receive on social media. Catering to the mob has always been politicians' M.O., but before social media, they were largely protected from the unfiltered feedback of their voters. They may have received letters or spoken with people in person, but both of these modes of communication are far less inflammatory and hurtful than online communication, and therefore make acting independently much easier.

As stewards of our society, politicians need to be the best equipped to see reality as it is, to see problems and their solutions as they are. If they use social media, they become subject to the cognitive distortions all of us have and as a result develop a distorted understanding of the world. If you or I are wrong, who cares, but if our political elites are wrong, then it's catastrophic since they steer the large ship of public resources and energy. 

This is why our leaders should leave social media. If not completely, then they should at least let their staff handle their accounts. Doing so ensures they can be as impartial as possible and seek guidance from facts, science, data, and real community leaders, rather than the vocal minority that dominates our social platforms.