Why Elevate Is Returning to Social Media, Without Pretending It Is Harmless

On August 25, 2025, Elevate Youth Services stepped away from social media.

We did not leave because it was ineffective. We left because it was effective at the wrong things: capturing attention, intensifying emotion and turning human behavior into advertising revenue. These platforms are designed to keep people watching, scrolling and reacting. For an organization supporting young people already navigating anxiety, harassment, social comparison and the pressure to perform their lives for an audience, that created a contradiction we could no longer ignore.

So we left.

The concerns behind that decision have not gone away. Vermont’s lawsuit against Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has brought some of those concerns into sharper focus.Vermont alleges Meta designed Instagram to keep teenagers engaged longer, knowing the risks, in order to sell more advertising. Meta denies this, and no court has ruled on the claims.

So why are we returning?

Because leaving did not make social media disappear, and it did not change how the platforms work. What it did, in part, was make Elevate less visible to the people who help make our work possible: parents looking for support, partners looking to connect, and community members who saw less of the everyday evidence that this work is about trust, creativity, and joy, not only crisis.

And we missed something too. We missed our community.

A platform can't offer a young person a safe place to sleep or notice when someone who usually talks has gone quiet. But it can help a teacher know where to refer a student, or help a donor understand what young people in Vermont are actually facing.

We are not returning to build an audience of young people, and we are not asking them to spend more time on platforms we know can cause harm. Our focus is the community around them: families, educators, service providers, and partners.

We will not chase followers or let an algorithm set our pace. We will not use a young person's most painful experiences to generate engagement, and their stories will remain theirs, not content we own because we supported them through part of it. We will share the work, the partnerships, and the resources, not the personal lives of the young people we serve.

Social media will remain one small part of how people encounter Elevate. It will not become the measure of our relevance or the center of our mission.

The platform is not the community. The platform is not the work. The people are.