Social media has created a generation taught to compare, covet, and consume. Socialism arrives promising to satisfy desires that only hard work and free enterprise can sustainably provide.
One of the most destructive cultural developments of the past twenty years has received remarkably little attention. It is not merely the rise of social media, but the rise of manufactured envy. Platforms that began as a way for families and friends to stay connected have evolved into global competitions where millions of people display carefully edited versions of their lives.
Filters erase imperfections. Luxury vacations become routine. Exotic automobiles, designer clothing, expensive homes, private jets, and seemingly effortless wealth fill endless scrolling feeds.
For many users, especially young people, the result is not inspiration—it is comparison. And comparison, left unchecked, often becomes envy.
Researchers have found that social media encourages upward social comparison, particularly among younger users, increasing dissatisfaction with their own circumstances and amplifying the “fear of missing out.” Social media companies profit from that emotion. Influencers profit from it. Advertisers profit from it. Increasingly, politicians do as well.
Every successful political movement appeals to deeply rooted human emotions. Some appeal to hope. Others appeal to patriotism or fear. Socialism has historically found its greatest appeal in resentment and envy. Its message is deceptively simple: someone else has more than you. Someone else lives in the house you wish you owned, drives the car you wish you could afford, and enjoys a lifestyle you have been taught to believe you deserve.
Rather than asking how successful people created their prosperity, socialism asks a different question: Why should they have it at all?
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher understood this tendency better than most. She famously observed, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” She also noted that socialism often appears less interested in making the poor wealthier than in making the wealthy poorer. In fact, history repeatedly demonstrates that many redistributive political movements spend far more time discussing how wealth should be divided than how wealth is actually created.
Social media has fundamentally altered the psychology of younger generations. Previous generations compared themselves primarily to neighbors, classmates, or coworkers. Today’s young adults compare themselves every waking hour to celebrities, entrepreneurs, professional athletes, entertainers, and social media influencers whose carefully curated lives bear little resemblance to reality. Algorithms continuously feed users images of people who appear richer, happier, more attractive, and more successful than themselves. It should surprise no one that many young Americans conclude they are somehow falling behind.
What rarely appears on Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube are the years of sacrifice that almost always precede genuine success. Viewers seldom see the entrepreneur who mortgaged his home three times before building a successful business, the contractor who worked nights and weekends for twenty years, the physician who endured a decade of education and residency, or the investor who quietly accumulated wealth through disciplined saving and decades of compound growth.
Social media compresses decades of effort into a thirty-second highlight reel. Success appears effortless. Wealth appears instantaneous. Luxury appears normal rather than exceptional. When the hard work disappears from the story, redistributing someone else’s success begins to seem perfectly reasonable.
It is therefore not surprising that socialism has gained renewed popularity among many younger Americans. Surveys have shown that younger generations express more favorable attitudes toward socialism than their parents and grandparents. There are many reasons for this. Housing prices have risen dramatically. College tuition has exploded. Student debt burdens millions of graduates. Economic mobility often feels more difficult than it did for previous generations. These concerns are genuine and deserve serious attention. Yet social media magnifies those frustrations by presenting extraordinary lifestyles as though they are ordinary expectations. The emotional response creates fertile ground for politicians promising to solve inequality by expanding government and redistributing wealth.
Within today’s Democratic Party, that message has become increasingly prominent. Self-described democratic socialists now occupy influential positions within the party, while others advocate policies that would significantly expand federal control over healthcare, education, housing, energy, taxation, and wealth redistribution. Supporters argue these programs create greater fairness and economic security. Critics respond that every new entitlement, regulation, or subsidy eventually raises the same unavoidable question: At whose expense?
Government creates no wealth of its own. Every benefit it provides must first be financed through taxation, borrowing, inflation, or future generations who will eventually be asked to pay today’s bills.
America has never promised equal outcomes. It has promised equal opportunity under the law. Those are profoundly different ideas. Free societies inevitably produce different results because individuals make different choices, possess different talents, assume different risks, and devote different levels of effort to different pursuits.
Capitalism rewards innovation, investment, entrepreneurship, and productive labor. Socialism increasingly looks to political power to redistribute what others have already created. History offers countless examples of that experiment, and the results have consistently included slower economic growth, diminished innovation, expanding government control, and declining personal freedom.
The proper response to seeing another person’s success has never been resentment. It should be curiosity. How did they build it? What sacrifices did they make? What risks did they assume? What can I learn from their example? Those questions built the American economy. They inspired generations of immigrants, entrepreneurs, inventors, and workers who transformed modest beginnings into remarkable success stories. Envy has never built a civilization. Innovation has. Discipline has. Entrepreneurship has. Personal responsibility has.
Social media will continue rewarding appearances, and politicians will continue rewarding promises. But neither can repeal economic reality. A nation that teaches its young people to covet what others possess rather than encouraging them to build prosperity for themselves risks replacing ambition with resentment. The American Dream was never that government would guarantee every citizen the lifestyle of an internet influencer. It was that every citizen would remain free to pursue success through talent, perseverance, innovation, prudent risk-taking, and hard work.
That dream remains worth defending. Perhaps the first step is teaching the next generation not to ask, “Why do they have more than I do?” but instead, “What can I build?”
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