1. Social media is a business, and a relatively small part of the business world at that. It makes money by selling advertisements or, sometimes, charging its users a fee for access and special privileges. It's in what some call the "get eyeballs" business. So please understand that social media is not about free speech, community, political activism, or any of the other lofty goals attributed to it. It's a business, and its only concern is keeping revenue above expenses, ideally far above expenses.
1a. Don't provide free labor to a business. To attract eyeballs, it needs content, and that's where the users come in. They provide the labor to create this content. Some users monetize social media, i.e. they get paid for creating content, whether by getting a share of the platform's ad revenue (like Youtube video creators), or by selling advertisements on their own, embedded in the content they create, or via other routes. But the vast majority of people creating content on social media receive very little or no income for their work. They work for free. One of the most ironic things I have seen on social media is the socialist community, which works tirelessly to create content on Twitter, for nothing, as they preach about the need for a living wage, and union rights. They are, apparently unknowingly, working for free to put money into the pockets of capitalist shareholders. On that note, it would be interesting to try to unionize social media content creators, the way the traditional entertainment industry unionizes all of its employees, from its writers and actors to its set personnel.
1b. The likelihood of making material money as a social media person is very low. I know what you're thinking, if you try hard enough you too will be the next Kim Kardashian or Logan Paul. In the least you will make minimum wage for your efforts. No, you likely will not. The odds are stacked against you as I'll discuss in greater detail later.
2. Being a social media content creator is an endless struggle. There are millions if not tens of millions of people desperately trying to get eyeballs on social media. There is no barrier to entry for those wishing to become a social media person. So even if you make it and become a noteworthy influencer, you will have to create content every day or you will be forgotten. Every single day, you have to get up and invent ways to get eyeballs and likes.
2a. Your content will be poor quality, because you have to produce so much. Jerry Seinfeld once said that the best comic has only a few good standup shows within them. In their entire career spanning decades, that's all they will have. So even the most talented creators can't create content every day. If you want to produce content every day, it will necessarily be low quality content.
2b. Due to the intense competition you may, likely will, become desperate and embarrass yourself. Perhaps I'll elaborate with well-known examples later, although we can all think of some without me having to highlight them.
2c. The above can become especially problematic if the person is entitled, or possesses other qualities that lead them to believe they have a right to eyeballs. I have seen people lose all sense of humanity and decency in this pursuit. Like, they would destroy their own mother if that would get them attention.
2d. People dislike those who constantly and relentlessly demand attention. Familiarity breeds contempt as they say, and the more you try to get eyeballs, the more people will dislike and resent you. You see this manifest in the glee the social media audience feels, the feeding frenzy, when a big influencer gets taken down, for example.
2e. Incidentally, one way you can amuse yourself as a spectator, is to see what sort of things respectable people do for eyeballs. You will see the most brilliant and accomplished people humiliate and degrade themselves in an attempt to get likes. For example, I saw a person with a very difficult to attain degree and job in one of the hardest fields spend months trying to come up with memes to go viral, in vain.
3. Most things, if not everything, on social media are ephemeral and meaningless. Social media has a very short attention span. So even if something goes viral on social media, it's certain to be forgotten. In that sense, little that you see on social media has long-term value. They're fleeting thoughts that provide temporary amusement. They're not the sort of thoughts that endure, and you won't be missing out on anything if you miss that day's viral thing.
4. A relatively high number of the people on social media have something wrong with them. All humans have a deep desire to socialize. Unfortunately, some lack the qualities required to easily do this in the real world. They are society's "others," and so they fill their needs partly via social media. So, in a sense, if you hang out on social media, you may be interacting with what society views as a lower quality of person, than you would be interacting with in real life. I won't elaborate on this further but do your own survey and come to your own conclusion.
5. Further on the topic of a human being's need to socialize, most discussion on social media is not real relationship building. These are parasocial relationships that do not provide any of the deep and substantive things you can get from actual and enduring real world relationships.
5a. One particular reason social media is a bad place to meet people, is that it’s sometimes a playground for people somewhere along the cluster B personality spectrum. The narcissists who believe their every word and thought is gold and a gift to the world. The overly dramatic, perhaps histrionic, who create a spectacle of themselves, and who sometimes enjoy the attention that comes from inducing strong emotions in others. The antisocial, who view humans as “followers,” to be manipulated and used for their own benefit.
6. If you use social media for research, to help you accomplish a goal, you will be influenced by group think and hive mind, making it harder to solve the problem before you. You will inevitably go along with the social media herd. This will rob you of other perspectives you need to make the best decision. It will also rob you of creativity, because your brain will have been so influenced by social media's group think that it will be unable to come up with novel and creative solutions to problems.
7. Social media is a toxic place. If you're on there too long, you will inevitably get into arguments and disputes with people. Some of these will be vitriolic and hurtful. This will drain your emotional energy, spirit and lower your outlook on the world and humanity.
8. Social media can overstimulate. One particularly bad way this happens, is that social media may frighten and terrorize you with misleading information to get your attention and engagement, e.g. warnings about impending doom. Write down the number of such frightening thoughts put into your mind by social media, and whether they turned out to be prescient, or if they simply wasted your attention and emotional energy. But social media doesn't always overstimulate by fear, it can do so by being vulgar, grotesque, anger-inducing ... Again, I could give examples but it's not hard to think of some.
9. Social media can exhaust your attention span. Even if social media doesn't overstimulate, it can still expend your attention. We only have a limit amount of "attention energy" per period and if you spend it on social media, you may not have as much left for other things.
10. Social media is not a good way to achieve any political or real world goal. This is probably the most controversial item on this list, but I have yet to see any evidence to the contrary. I have seen countless efforts by social media warriors to attempt real political change via hashtags and such, only to fail miserably. Change in the real world requires more than going viral. It requires actions in the real world. So, for example, Donald Trump didn't become President because of his twitter account, as some say. He had that account for years, and still polled very low when he started campaigning in 2015. He became president because over the course of a year, he campaigned very well, in the real world.