(A)Social Networks: Unsafe at Any Age is a diagnostic framework within the Pildem Framework. Current social media platforms are structurally harmful to democratic societies — not because of bad actors or insufficient moderation, but because of their fundamental design. Like Ralph Nader's Unsafe at Any Speed (1965), which exposed that automobiles were designed to be dangerous, social platforms are designed to be epistemically harmful.
The harm is not age-gated. Children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly are all affected — through different mechanisms (addiction, radicalisation, loneliness, manipulation) but from the same root cause: engagement-maximising algorithms operating in epistemically unzoned spaces where news, satire, entertainment, propaganda, and personal expression are flattened into a single feed. The concept of a minimum age for social media implies that platforms are safe for adults. They are not. They are unsafe at any age.
Three media ecosystems shape democratic life: Mainstream Media offers institutional accountability but limited pluralism. Attention Media offers unlimited voices but no shared ground. Commons Media — the third path — offers shared ground with plural voices, separated, visible, and testable.