Nick Clegg  thinks blaming social media is a comforting lie

That argument landed towards a sobering backdrop. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer paints an image of a world retreating inward. Throughout markets, belief in establishments continues to fray. Persons are much less keen to interact with views in contrast to their very own. Seventy p.c say they’re hesitant to belief those that “see the world in a different way.” Many would slightly change jobs than work for a supervisor with opposing values.

Edelman calls the situation “insularity.” Clegg calls it human.

Insularity isn’t new -insecurity is

Clegg rejected the concept that insularity is a novel digital pathology. In his view, it’s a rational response to extended insecurity.

“My intuition is it’s not new. It’s human nature,” he mentioned. “Belief in different folks and establishments is closely correlated as to whether you are feeling safe about your individual circumstances -your job, your loved ones, your future.”

Within the UK, he traced that insecurity by way of a protracted sequence of shocks. The monetary crash, a decade of stagnant actual wages, Brexit, political chaos. Every second weakened confidence in authority and competence.

“Tens of millions of individuals thought, ‘Crikey, the folks in positions of authority -governments, regulators, bankers -are charlatans.’ After which their actual take-home pay fell behind costs for years. After all folks retreat. After all they flip inward.”

From that perspective, social fragmentation just isn’t one thing executed to society by know-how. It’s one thing society does to itself below pressur

“I’m extraordinarily sceptical” of the social media scapegoat

The place Clegg turned most animated was on the tendency guilty platforms for political polarisation and declining belief.

“I’m extraordinarily sceptical, to place it mildly, of the thought there’s some technical, algorithmic repair for this,” he mentioned.

He was cautious to not deny that social media has results. However he pushed again arduous on the declare that it’s the major explanation for division.

“In the event you truly have a look at the analysis -the causal hyperlink between utilizing social media and polarisation -it simply isn’t there in the best way folks assume,” he argued. “In America, polarisation erupted earlier than social media was even a factor.”

Clegg cited longitudinal tutorial research exhibiting that affective polarisation—the diploma to which individuals dislike these with opposing views -has generally risen quickest amongst teams least uncovered to the web.

“The concept algorithms have herded us into sealed-off rabbit holes is far weaker, evidentially, than folks assume,” he mentioned. “It’s a way more handy story than confronting the financial and political shocks we’ve lived by way of.”

He additionally pointed to vested pursuits shaping the narrative.

“The established press hate social media as a result of it screwed up their promoting mannequin,” he mentioned. “In order that they’ve received an axe to grind. That doesn’t make platforms saints. However it does imply we must be cautious of shortcuts.”

Virality issues greater than bubbles

If Clegg rejects the “filter bubble” thesis, he does imagine one thing genuinely new has entered the system: virality.

“We’ve by no means lived in a world the place, with the swipe of a display, hundreds of thousands of individuals can instantly see your personal ideas,” he mentioned.

Content material that provokes concern, anger or outrage spreads as a result of it’s emotionally potent -just as sensational headlines all the time have. The distinction now could be pace and scale.

“That dynamic positively has an impact,” Clegg acknowledged. “However it’s very completely different from saying know-how is the foundation explanation for social breakdown.”

In different phrases, platforms amplify what already exists. They don’t invent it.

AI, energy and “boiling the ocean”

Clegg prolonged this realism to synthetic intelligence, stripping away the mystique that usually surrounds it.

“We name it intelligence, however what we’re actually coping with are probabilistic engines with no understanding of the world,” he mentioned. “They generate convincing solutions with out having ideas.”

He described massive language fashions in bodily phrases: information centres, GPUs, vitality and water.

“It’s an exceptionally inefficient know-how,” he mentioned. “You’re actually boiling the ocean.”

That bodily actuality underpins what he known as the “energy paradox”: digital instruments that really feel empowering to people are constructed on infrastructures which are radically centralising.

“Solely a handful of corporations and nations can afford to do that at scale,” he mentioned. “That focus of energy isn’t an accident -it’s baked into the physics of the know-how.”

The hazard of searching for simple villains

Clegg’s broader warning -one that resonates strongly with the Belief Barometer’s findings -is about society’s urge for food for easy explanations.

“We like the thought there’s one factor guilty,” he mentioned. “As a result of then accountability sits some other place.”

However belief, he argued, doesn’t collapse due to one platform, one know-how or one group of individuals. It erodes when establishments fail repeatedly, when residing requirements stagnate, and when politics stops providing credible options.

“You’ll be able to’t repair that by tweaking an algorithm,” he mentioned.

If there was a problem in his remarks for the communications business, it was this: cease promoting consolation.

As Edelman’s information reveals, three-quarters of individuals imagine insularity have to be addressed. Clegg’s intervention suggests the more durable fact is that addressing it means coping with economics, politics and energy -not simply platforms.

Or, as he put it, with attribute bluntness: “When you’re trustworthy about what the issues truly are, folks change into inventive. However so long as we fake there’s a magic technical repair, we’re mendacity to ourselves.”

For a dialog about belief, that could be probably the most uncomfortable -and helpful -place to finish.