Was Charlie Kirk killed by social media?

When news broke that US conservative commentator Charlie Kirk had been killed, the immediate reaction across much of the internet was confusion, followed closely by rage. For some, Kirk had become a symbol of the American right: provocative, unapologetic and divisive. For others, he represented everything that had gone wrong in modern discourse.

And while the circumstances surrounding his murder remain unclear, one question quickly surfaced in comment sections, newsrooms and private chats alike: Was this another tragic symptom of online polarisation and is social media to blame?

We’re accustomed to hearing about the impact of social media on children. The rise in anxiety, depression, body image issues and cyberbullying has rightly sparked concern among parents and educators. However, there’s an equally urgent crisis unfolding among adults and it’s been quietly growing for more than a decade. We don’t often speak about it in the same way, perhaps because adults are expected to ‘know better’, to be more resilient, more grounded. But adults are no less vulnerable to manipulation; in fact, they may be more so, precisely because they don’t believe they can be manipulated at all.

Let’s be clear: there is no evidence, at the time of writing, that Kirk’s death was caused directly by anything posted online. But it is impossible to ignore the larger picture: the way in which polarisation, fuelled by online echo chambers, has made political violence in the United States and elsewhere feel disturbingly normal.

And this isn’t a one-off. We’ve seen this before, most memorably during the storming of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. That attack, broadcast in real time across Facebook and Twitter, was not a spontaneous uprising. It was the outcome of weeks, even years, of online radicalisation, misinformation and dehumanisation. When people are convinced their side is morally superior and the other is evil, violence starts to feel justified.

Social media plays a central role in creating this polarised climate. Through algorithm-driven feeds, platforms like YouTube, Facebook, TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) push users toward content they already agree with.

This might sound harmless at first; Who doesn’t like reading things that match their beliefs? But, over time, these ‘recommendations’ trap people inside ideological bubbles. What starts as a mild preference becomes an all-consuming world view. You stop seeing alternative views not because they don’t exist but because the algorithm decides you won’t engage with them. And so it narrows your exposure until everything you see confirms what you already believe.

This is how echo chambers form digital environments where disagreement is rare, opposition is mocked and nuance is lost. In these spaces, other people aren’t just wrong. They’re dangerous. They’re brainwashed. They’re enemies. And, when that mindset takes root, real-world consequences follow.

In 2016, a man walks into a pizza shop with a gun because he believes children are being trafficked there, a conspiracy born online. In 2021, a mob storms a government building believing an election was stolen, a lie repeated often enough to feel true. And, today, a public figure like Kirk is killed. Regardless of motive, the climate of rage, suspicion and tribalism created by social media cannot be ignored.

Social media is a tool and, like any powerful tool, it can build or it can destroy- Alexiei Dingli

Adults, unlike children, are often exposed to political content. This makes the consequences of their online radicalisation even more serious. They vote. They campaign. They influence others. And, in extreme cases, they kill.

Yet, we continue to treat social media as harmless entertainment, as something that can be managed with a bit of ‘digital detox’ or an app timer. But this isn’t just about screen time, it’s about what’s on the screen. It’s about a system that profits from outrage, that rewards conflict over compromise and that shapes the political landscape far more than any traditional newspaper or news bulletin.

To be clear, social media did not invent polarisation. People have always disagreed. And politics has always been messy. But the scale, speed and depth of division we are now seeing, especially in Western democracies, has no historical equivalent. Social media didn’t just pour fuel on the fire. It rewired the furnace. It monetised anger and sold it back to us as engagement. And, as long as that model continues, incidents like the Capitol riot and perhaps even the killing of controversial figures will not be rare exceptions.

We should not wait for more tragedies to have this conversation.

Whether you liked Kirk or not, his death is a reminder that ideas have consequences, and so do the platforms that spread them.

This isn’t just an American problem. Across Europe, populist movements have surged in part thanks to online mobilisation. In Malta, political debate on Facebook often descends into personal attacks and tribal cheerleading, rather than genuine discussion. We’re not immune, we’re just smaller.

So what can we do? First, we must stop treating social media as a neutral space. It is not a digital town square. It is a business model and its product is attention, your attention. We must demand more transparency from tech companies about how their algorithms work. Governments must regulate these platforms as they would any other industry that impacts public safety. But, more than that, we as individuals must be more critical, more reflective and more sceptical of what we see and share. Ask yourself: Who is benefiting from my anger? Who gains when I see the other side as less than human?

Kirk’s death may not have been caused by a tweet, a video or a post. But it happened in a world shaped by those things, a world where anger is amplified and violence increasingly seen as a form of justice. Until we address the toxic polarisation social media breeds, we will remain in danger, not just online but in the real world too.

It’s time we stopped thinking of social media as a child’s toy. It’s a tool and, like any powerful tool, it can build or it can destroy. And, right now, it’s doing far too much of the latter.

Alexiei Dingli is a professor of artificial intelligence.