In 2018 Facebook tried to make its feed healthier by rewarding “meaningful social interactions” between friends and family, and three years later its internal documents revealed that it had achieved the opposite: a feed that gave a louder voice to the angriest. Anyone who designs software gets this story instantly, because in my line of work there’s a saying that sums it up in one line: “when you optimise for a metric, it loses its value”.

In the previous instalments I told you that they knew, that those who tried to stop them had little success, and that today the job of surviving falls to the people who use them. In this instalment I’ll try to describe what a healthy social network would look like, what features it would have and, above all, which ones it wouldn’t have, and why. It’s the idea for a piece of software, dreamt up by someone who designs software for a living, and how such a network would keep itself afloat and who would control it is a problem big enough to fill the final instalment on its own.

In the first two instalments I explained that they knew, and that those who tried to stop them didn’t get very far: the odd jury, yes, laws hardly ever. Meanwhile, as the courts take their course and parliaments debate, social media stay exactly what they are, and they sit in the pockets of parents and children, tonight just like last night.

This is the most practical instalment of the series. I gathered what paediatricians, psychologists and health authorities recommend, and for each piece of advice I went looking for evidence that it actually works, because there’s plenty of common sense going around and a lot less data. Some things work, if only a little, and all the work is left to the people who use them and to families, which is, in my view, the most serious part of the whole business.

On 25 March 2026, in Los Angeles, twelve ordinary people locked in a room did what years of Congressional hearings had failed to do: they took a good hard look at Instagram and YouTube and decided, ten votes to two, that they had been negligently designed, that the companies had warned nobody of the risks, and that the design had been a substantial factor in the harm suffered by someone who is now around twenty. Six million dollars, and one of the first real cracks in a wall that looked like reinforced concrete.

Last week I told you that they knew. This time I want to tell you about the people who tried to stop them, because they deserve it: governments, judges, parliaments, regulators, and a handful of people who refused to give up. Spoiler: in front of a jury, when they get that far, the platforms always lose, and in front of a law they almost never do.

On 1 October the Pew Research Center published a survey, carried out in 37 countries and territories, of more than 45,000 people. The headline says that around the world a growing number of people are convinced social media is harming democracy.

I’ve been convinced of it for ages, and not just where democracy is concerned. I think social media, as it’s built today, is an addictive product, sold by companies that know it full well and that have done what they learnt from those who came before them, namely the cigarette makers and the oil companies: deny and stall, and meanwhile rake in loads of money at the expense of ordinary people. I’m saying it straight away so it’s clear which side I’m on. This is the first of five instalments, one a week, in which I try to prove it with facts, as I usually like to do. The maybe in the title comes at the end, so stick with me until then.

In Italian

In Italian