Over the years, social media has reshaped the way people of all ages interact with local and international news. With its growing influence and accessibility, many tend to turn to platforms such as Instagram and TikTok for information. Science.org, in their 2025 research, however, revealed that social media algorithms can engineer and exploit what the viewers see, especially when it comes to political news.
Political manipulation is structured around polarization, and news on social media has been known to heighten this. Junior Ariona Berani pointed out how biases can grow through both the consumption and sharing of content online.
“When people are on different sides, they like to say certain stuff or hide certain things from the other side,” Berani said. “I think for certain events, it could be possible that if certain algorithms say, ‘I don’t want this specific event to be put out to these certain people,’ they could be, not hiding it specifically, but more like putting it towards other people.”
Social science teacher Jean Liao further explained that people’s curiosity for answers is what is encouraging social media algorithm’s biased information output.
“Humans are naturally interested in secrets, or the other view, so there’s a feeding of that desire to know what the conspiracies are, the secrets are, that over emphasizes how much those problems exist in society” Liao said.
According to digital marketing strategist Chris Essey, algorithms on social media are simply specific instructions that feed and filter what viewers see on a platform depending on what the viewers themselves have spent time searching for or looking at. These algorithms are prominent, especially when it comes to the political content people see. Senior Isabel Antony expanded on Liao’s idea, describing algorithms’ content objective.
“I think the main goal of social media is to get as many viewers as possible,” Antony said. “Because of that goal, most algorithms would want to promote more extreme things so that would catch more people’s attention.”
Liao believes that news sources will finetune what information they output based on a prediction of the views the content will acquire. By focusing on the over exaggeration of larger political events happening in the world, the amount of engagement will be maximized.
“Every news outlet is going to pick and choose what they think is going to get more viewership,” Liao said.
When explaining why younger audiences choose to get political news and information from social media, Berani stated that the influence of social media has always been the foundation for the younger generations.
“That’s what we have grown doing,” Berani said. “Our parents and the generations before us, they’ve had newspapers, and then those newspapers turned into new news outlets and different networkings. But for us, we’ve always had social media as that beginning stage since we grew up.”
Antony agreed, adding that accessibility acts as a pillar for the youth’s consumption of news on social media.
“It’s really convenient because it’s right there at the tip of your fingers,” Antony said.
Convenience, however, does not guarantee authenticity. Antony believes that not everything algorithms feed to viewers is in their best interests. She found that many sources of information on online platforms are not credited nor have any specific certification for the claims they make.
“On social media, anyone could put anything out there, and we don’t know them. Because of that, they don’t have those journalistic ethics that most journalists have, or most news companies have,” Antony said. “We don’t really know who’s out there putting things on the internet.”