Why Are We So Dependent on Social Media?

To understand social media's grip, start with the demanding task of being yourself.

Posted April 16, 2026 | Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Two recent jury verdicts have cast a harsh light on social media . A New Mexico jury found Meta, owner of Instagram and Facebook, negligent for misleading users about the safety of its platforms. A day later, a jury in Los Angeles found Meta and YouTube liable for “addictive” design features, such as infinite scroll and algorithmic recommendations, that ensnared a young user, causing her significant mental health harms. 1

Covering the L.A. trial, a New York Times reporter anticipated the verdict. Criticism of social media has been growing for a decade, he noted, and although 3 billion people use Facebook and Instagram, that doesn’t mean they “approve of social media or even like it.” But, sounding like someone talking about addiction , he added, “they just can’t imagine being without it.” 2

Why not? Why does social media have such a grip on so many? Besides Silicon Valley skullduggery, a place to look is in what people say they need it for. In an earlier post, I considered our diminishing social connection . The use of social media, I argued, was both an indicator of the decline in community participation and growing loneliness and a response to it. Here, I want to take up another social need that long predated social media. We might call this task “self-formation,” the now-familiar process/business/ordeal (take your pick) of producing and sustaining a personal identity .

Since at least the 1960s, the disciplinary society has been disappearing. That is, the stable institutions that had constrained individuals and set clear expectations for them, whether through families, established communities, or tightly regulated traditions, have eroded and lost much of their hold. Important life choices, such as those pertaining to careers, marriages, and family roles, were, in the words of psychologist Barry Schwartz, once “made by default.” But now, he adds, after the changes of recent decades, very little is. 3 Questions of who we will be, what we will do, and where we will go have become matters of genuine (if, in practice, always constrained) choice. Our self—as we all know firsthand—is now a kind of project, which, by our own lights and resources, we must actively work on and develop.

The task of self-formation is demanding. We must find our own meaning and purpose, decide what work we’ll pursue, negotiate our relationships, create our opportunities, establish our status, and so on. This work, the work of becoming ourselves, requires a lot of careful social interpretation. We must become adept at monitoring ourselves, at gathering information on how we are doing, and at telling a coherent story about ourselves in terms of the ideas and practices we identify with and incorporate. Since the future is shifting and unpredictable, we must also be prepared for continuous change and self-narrative revision.

While we do the work of self-formation on ourselves, our project is reliant on institutions, available social spaces, and other people. Much of what we need—knowledge, feedback, and recognition—we cannot produce for ourselves. This is where, for many, the use of social media has come to serve a critical function.

Social Media Functions

Based on surveys, interviews, and other research, 4 we can divide the uses to which people employ social media for self-formation into at least three categories:

Of course, social media can and does have many negative consequences for self-formation. Recent commentary has focused heavily on the negatives, especially for youth. But by considering how people use social media as an infrastructure for their self-making, we can also see how they might become highly dependent on them: If they are not “addicted,” in the sense being argued in the tort cases—as helplessly under the influence of the engineering of the platforms—they are nonetheless deeply resistant to letting go, or in the case of youth, letting parents interfere. Perhaps many “just can’t imagine being without it,” because their very sense of self hangs in the balance.

Cecilia Kang, Ryan Mac, and Eli Tan. “Meta and YouTube Found Negligent in Landmark Social Media Addiction Case,” New York Times , March 25, 2026. nytimes.com/2026/03/12/technology/social-media-addiction-society-verdict.html.
David Streitfeld. “Social Media Addiction Trial Nears End. Society Long Ago Rendered Its Verdict.” New York Times , March 12, 2026. nytimes.com/2026/03/12/technology/social-media-addiction-society-verdict.html.
Barry Schwartz, The Battle for Human Nature , New York: W.W. Norton, p. 16.
See, for example, McKinsey Health Institute. “Gen Z Mental Health: The Impact of Tech and Social Media,” April 28, 2023. mckinsey.com/mhi/our-insights/gen-z-mental-health-the-impact-of-tech-and-social-media#/

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Joseph E. Davis is Research Professor of Sociology and Director of the Picturing the Human Colloquy of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture at the University of Virginia.

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This article is part of the Bringwise Psychology Journal — daily insights on human behavior, mental health, and personal growth.