This essay examines how social media affects individuality primarily through the political and philosophical work of Hannah Arendt. By using concepts such as the individual, the social sphere, the political sphere and the masses, this study analyses whether social media is favourable for individual self-expression or if it promotes conformity and erasure of individuality. This analysis is based on Arendt’s works The Human Condition and The Origins of Totalitarianism, and on a selection of contemporary research on social media. 

The analysis shows that social media only marginally allows genuine individual expression. Unfortunately, the structure of social media is shaped by conformist functions such as ‘like’, ‘follow’, ‘share’ as well as the algorithmic feeds. These functions that tend to reduce possible genuine expressions to abnormal or asocial behaviours or count them as deviations from statistical norms. Arendt’s examination of the expansion of the social sphere into not only the political sphere but almost all parts of our lives show the increasingly overwhelming nature of this sphere. The social sphere is an environment where the boundary between private and public becomes increasingly blurred, mostly hindering genuinely individual expression and hence resisting what Arendt understands as political action. Through Arendt’s analysis of mass society, the essay illuminates how the isolation and conformity in the masses can be identified among social media users. This comparison also shows the risk of groups with these properties. The essay argues that social media, to a significant extent threatens individuality by reinforcing conformity and dissuading genuine actions that are needed to form a deeper sense of individuality and of interhuman relations.