On paper it sounds great, though, doesn't it? Allowing people to connect through shared interests without regard to geographical boundaries or, with the rise of AI translation, even language barriers. It's a late-rising aspect of the Internet which was touted as a way to unite humanity and give everyone access to knowledge.
In practice, though, social media apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and others are a complete cesspool that encourage the worst behaviors. Their algorithms are designed to drive outrage and spread it far and wide. As noted in the article, they amplify voices without regard to the content of the message. I heard a song lyric recently that immediately made me think of social media. "We're deafened by the naive while we silence the wise." (Can't Go to Hell by Sin Shake Sin, if anyone's interested)
They charge nothing for this "product" because the app is not the product. The user is the product, and in the eyes of the makers of these apps, users aren't people. Users are a collection of data points which can be bought, sold, traded, or stolen, and ultimately used to sell us more stuff or drive us to engage in other behaviors.
Social media also encourages a particularly malignant kind of narcissism, in my opinion. People put literally every detail of their lives online for the consumption of total strangers, people they don't know and will almost certainly never meet. They derive validation from how many followers they have and, for all intents and purposes, the click is the new currency of the digital age. People engage in stunts, from the outrageous to the annoying to the deadly, simply out of a desire to gain followers and get clicks.
Perhaps as a result of being a late Gen Xer, I missed out on the social media craze. I used Facebook for a couple years before growing bored of it and canceling my account. I don't flatter myself that my life is interesting... because it isn't. I get up, go to work, deal with work stuff, come home, walk the dog, make dinner, and then dink around the house or play video games or watch movies. Riveting stuff, it ain't.
And at the end of the day, our political leaders largely can't hold these social media companies to account for what they do. We trust them to regulate and police themselves because they pinkie promised that they're super concerned about these problems and will absolutely make solving them a top priority. 
I think we'd all be better off if Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. had never come to be. A pox on all their houses.
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