Does social media do more harm than good for students?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Does social media do more harm than good for students?". Your opponent's style: A scholar

Social media is a huge part of a student life, it helps them form connection and explore a myriad of topics, but especially as students, they use it as a tool acting as a source of information for educational purposes

You're conflating utility with net benefit. Yes, students use social media for those things, but so what? They could form connections through clubs, explore topics via libraries, and access vetted educational sources without the algorithmic addiction, mental health toll, and misinformation baked into these platforms. Why should we accept the harms just because the tools do something useful?

You state a compelling point, however Algorithmic addiction is a form of misuse which is the irresponsible use of social media, it is not the flaw of the technology itself. In addition, misinformation's can be solved through social media literacy, as students it is expected for them to fact check informations by searching for credible evidences and trustworthy sources

You're smuggling in massive assumptions. First, "misuse" presumes students have the cognitive maturity and willpower to resist systems engineered by teams of behavioural psychologists to be addictive. That's naive. Second, your literacy fix is circular logic: you're asking students to use critical thinking skills to compensate for a platform designed to bypass critical thinking. The real question isn't whether perfect users could theoretically use social media responsibly. It's whether teenagers actually do. Where's your evidence they're doing this at scale?