Social Media and the Future of Democracy

European democracy has always thrived not in silence, but in spirited argument. From the ancient polis to the coffeehouses of the Enlightenment, from pamphleteers to parliaments, Europe never treated debate as a nuisance but as the lifeblood of civic life. Our political tradition rests on an unspoken yet fundamental assumption: citizens are free, and therefore permitted to think, speak, challenge, and disagree.

Today, as political conversation increasingly moves online, this tradition faces a new test. Rather than embracing the digital sphere as a continuation of Europe’s civic culture, the instinct of many European institutions has been to supervise, filter, and restrict it. The Digital Services Act and the Regulation on Political Advertising are defended in the name of transparency and electoral integrity. These goals are noble. But noble intentions do not guarantee democratic outcomes. Too easily, talk of ‘safety’ and ‘responsibility’ becomes a respectable vocabulary for narrowing public space.

A Union that claims to champion pluralism cannot simultaneously fear it online. And yet, a growing discomfort with unmediated debate—especially when it comes from politically inconvenient voices—has quietly taken root in Brussels. The worry is no longer only disinformation or foreign interference. It is the unpredictability of citizens when they speak freely, organise independently, and challenge established narratives without first passing through institutional filters.

This supervisory instinct may please the powerful, but it punishes those who lack access to traditional media and party machinery. Those already in power do not struggle to be heard; it is new and non-mainstream voices who depend on open digital platforms to reach citizens. Regulations that burden political communication risk closing the gate on precisely the outsiders democracy claims to welcome. If political advertising online becomes too tightly controlled, only the already powerful will be heard.

We are no longer speaking in hypotheticals. Recent elections have demonstrated this dynamic clearly. In Cyprus, Fidias Panayiotou, a young YouTuber without party backing, built a campaign through TikTok and YouTube. He spoke directly to citizens in an authentic, informal voice, and his audience responded not as passive consumers, but as participants. He did not ask permission to enter public life; the digital public square allowed him to walk in. His campaign did not succeed despite bypassing institutions, but because he bypassed them.

In Spain, Alvise Pérez mobilised a vast following through Telegram, Instagram, and alternative platforms, constructing a political force beyond party structures and establishing himself as a serious actor despite mainstream hostility. In Hungary, András László leveraged digital ecosystems, especially pro-government online networks, to break into the European Parliament. Whether one agrees with these figures or recoils from their messages is irrelevant. What matters is the mechanism: online platforms enabled political participation beyond party gates and media filters.

These examples are not anomalies. They are early signs of a tectonic shift in how political legitimacy can form. Across France, Italy, Germany, and Poland, digital communities have begun to challenge established hierarchies. New voices—sometimes ideological, sometimes anti-system, sometimes simply unconventional—are entering public life through screens, chats, livestreams, and comments. They are building trust horizontally, not through official endorsement.

What unsettles institutions is not the presence of trolls or foreign agents, but the realisation that dissent has escaped the editorial room and entered the living room. Europe’s leaders repeat the word “democracy,” yet seem uneasy with one of its defining features: people may choose what elites do not prefer them to choose.

It is worth stating plainly: democracy does not require comfort; it requires courage—the courage to let citizens decide, speak, and be persuaded in open space.

Yes, dangers exist online. Disinformation campaigns, coordinated harassment, and foreign propaganda are real. But the cure for disorder cannot be the quiet suffocation of dissent. The response to bad information is better information, not pre-cleared information. The answer to populism cannot be administrative containment, and the counter to extremism cannot be a shrinking of permissible debate.

Today’s young Europeans understand this instinctively. They are not waiting to be invited into public life. They debate policy on TikTok, challenge officials in Instagram comments, participate in Telegram town halls, circulate arguments via memes and short videos, and treat social platforms not as entertainment, but as participatory civic arenas. They do not tolerate the idea that only accredited voices may enter the discussion.

These habits may be informal, sometimes clumsy, sometimes irreverent, but they are democratic instincts. They reveal a generation that has discovered politics not through party membership cards, but through direct engagement. This is not a crisis for democracy; it is its renewal.

Social media can also serve as a bridge between citizens and the European project itself if institutions choose to meet people where they already are. Far from being merely channels for campaigning, platforms can host genuine consultations, real-time town halls, and participatory polling that inform policymaking and let Europeans see how their views influence outcomes. By harnessing these tools thoughtfully, the Union could narrow the democratic distance to Brussels, turn passive subjects into active stakeholders, and enlist a new generation in the work of shaping Europe’s future—not as consumers of policy, but as contributors to it.

The tragedy would be if Brussels misreads this moment, interpreting energetic participation as destabilisation rather than vitality. The test of a political system is not whether debate is orderly, but whether dissenting citizens remain audible. Europe should fear not heated argument, but the cold silence that follows when only approved voices remain.

The challenge before us is not technical, but philosophical. Do we trust Europeans to speak freely, or do we quietly believe that democracy is safest when domesticated?

A confident Europe embraces open conversation. A nervous one treats speech as something to be managed. At stake is nothing less than the nature of European self-government.

Europe should stand where its history stands: on the side of open discourse, not curated consensus. If our institutions wish to defend democracy, they must trust the demos—the people—and accept that real participation cannot be programmed, controlled, or made predictable.

Democracy survives not by filtering dissent, but by confronting it, debating it, and ultimately flourishing through it. Europe should fear the day when dissenters stop speaking, not because harmony will have been achieved, but because democracy will have been lost.