In his new book, How to Save the Internet, former deputy prime minister and Meta executive Nick Clegg argues that the greatest threat to the internet is not its own flaws but overregulation. Clegg, who served as Meta’s president of global affairs until January 2025, frames the debate as a binary choice between an open internet and no internet, conflating the widely loved internet with the more controversial subset of social media.
Clegg acknowledges that democracy and teen mental health declined in the 2010s alongside the rise of social media, but he claims the correlation does not imply causation. He cites academic studies that align with Meta’s standard talking points, while ignoring research that suggests a direct link. However, internal documents from lawsuits against Meta reveal that Clegg himself once expressed urgency about teen mental health. In August 2021, he forwarded an employee’s request for more resources to address the issue to Mark Zuckerberg, adding that the company’s well-being work was “understaffed and fragmented”. Zuckerberg did not respond.
A recent Harris Poll survey of young American adults found that while only 17% of Gen Z regretted the internet’s invention, regret for social media platforms was much higher: 34% for Instagram, 47% for TikTok, and 50% for X. Clegg’s book, despite its title, largely defends Meta and big tech, repeating company talking points rather than offering a balanced assessment of social media’s harms.
Clegg’s defence of social media ignores the nuanced reality that many users would choose to turn off specific platforms without abandoning the internet entirely. By framing the issue as a threat to the internet itself, he risks obscuring the real challenges posed by social media, which can be regulated without dismantling the broader digital ecosystem.
