Strategic Expression, Popularity Traps, and Welfare in Social Media

Abstract: Social media platforms systematically reward popularity but not authenticity, incentivizing users to strategically tailor their expression for attention. We develop a utilitarian framework addressing strategic expression in social media. Agents hold fixed heterogeneous authentic opinions and derive (i) utility gains from the popularity of their own posts--measured by likes received--, and (ii) utility gains (losses) from exposure to content that aligns with (diverges from) their authentic opinion. Social media interaction acts as a state-dependent welfare amplifier: light topics generate Pareto improvements, whereas intense topics make everyone worse off in a polarized society (e.g., political debates during elections). Moreover, strategic expression amplifies social media polarization during polarized events while dampening it during unified events (e.g., national celebrations). Consequently, strategic distortions magnify welfare outcomes, expanding aggregate gains in light topics while exacerbating losses in intense, polarized ones. Counterintuitively, strategic agents often face a popularity trap: posting a more popular opinion is individually optimal, yet collective action by similar agents eliminates their authentic opinion from the platform, leaving them worse off than under the authentic-expression benchmark. Preference-based algorithms--widely used by platforms--or homophilic exposures discipline popularity-driven behavior, narrowing the popularity trap region and limiting its welfare effects. Our framework fills a critical gap in the social media literature by providing a microfoundation for user welfare that maps to observable metrics, while also introducing popularity incentives as an unexplored channel in social networks distinct from the canonical mechanisms of conformity, learning, persuasion, and (mis)information transmission.