Nick Clegg thinks blaming tech for social breakdown is a cop-out

That argument landed against a sobering backdrop. The 2026 Edelman Trust Barometer paints a picture of a world retreating inward. Across markets, trust in institutions continues to fray. People are less willing to engage with views unlike their own. 70% say they are hesitant to trust those who “see the world differently.” Many would rather change jobs than work for a manager with opposing values.

Edelman calls the condition “insularity.” Clegg calls it human.

Insularity isn’t new – insecurity is

Clegg rejected the idea that insularity is a novel digital pathology. In his view, it’s a rational response to prolonged insecurity.

“My instinct is it’s not new. It’s human nature,” he said. “Trust in other people and institutions is heavily correlated to whether you feel secure about your own circumstances – your job, your family, your future.”

In the UK, he traced that insecurity through a long sequence of shocks. The financial crash, a decade of stagnant real wages, Brexit, political chaos. Each moment weakened confidence in authority and competence.

“Millions of people thought, ‘Crikey, the people in positions of authority –governments, regulators, bankers – are charlatans.’ And then their real take-home pay fell behind prices for years. Of course people retreat. Of course they turn inward.”

From that perspective, social fragmentation is not something done to society by technology. It’s something society does to itself under pressure.

‘Extremely skeptical’ of the social media scapegoat

Where Clegg became most animated was on the tendency to blame platforms for political polarization and declining trust.

“I’m extremely sceptical, to put it mildly, of the idea there’s some technical, algorithmic fix for this,” he said.

He was careful not to deny that social media has effects. But he pushed back hard on the claim that it is the primary cause of division.

“If you actually look at the research – the causal link between using social media and polarization – it just isn’t there in the way people assume,” he argued. “In America, polarization erupted before social media was even a thing.”

Clegg cited longitudinal academic studies showing that affective polarization – the degree to which people dislike those with opposing views – has sometimes risen fastest among groups least exposed to the internet.

“The idea that algorithms have herded us into sealed-off rabbit holes is much weaker, evidentially, than people think,” he said. “It’s a much more convenient story than confronting the economic and political shocks we’ve lived through.”

He also pointed to vested interests shaping the narrative.

“The established press hate social media because it screwed up their advertising model,” he said. “So they’ve got an axe to grind. That doesn’t make platforms saints. But it does mean we should be wary of shortcuts.”

Virality matters more than bubbles

If Clegg rejects the “filter bubble” thesis, he does believe something genuinely new has entered the system: virality.

“We’ve never lived in a world where, with the swipe of a screen, millions of people can suddenly see your private thoughts,” he said.

Content that provokes fear, anger or outrage spreads because it is emotionally potent – just as sensational headlines always have. The difference now is speed and scale.

“That dynamic definitely has an effect,” Clegg acknowledged. “But it’s very different from saying technology is the root cause of social breakdown.”

In other words, platforms amplify what already exists. They do not invent it.

AI, power and ‘boiling the ocean’

Clegg extended this realism to artificial intelligence, stripping away the mystique that often surrounds it.

“We call it intelligence, but what we’re really dealing with are probabilistic engines with no understanding of the world,” he said. “They generate convincing answers without having concepts.”

He described large language models in physical terms: data centers, GPUs, energy and water.

“It’s an exceptionally inefficient technology,” he said. “You’re literally boiling the ocean.”

That physical reality underpins what he called the “power paradox”: digital tools that feel empowering to individuals are built on infrastructures that are radically centralizing.

“Only a handful of companies and countries can afford to do this at scale,” he said. “That concentration of power isn’t an accident – it’s baked into the physics of the technology.”

The danger of looking for easy villains

Clegg’s broader warning – one that resonates strongly with the Trust Barometer’s findings – is about society’s appetite for simple explanations.

“We like the idea there’s one thing to blame,” he said. “Because then responsibility sits somewhere else.”

But trust, he argued, doesn’t collapse because of one platform, one technology or one group of people. It erodes when institutions fail repeatedly, when living standards stagnate, and when politics stops offering credible solutions.

“You can’t fix that by tweaking an algorithm,” he said.

If there was a challenge in his remarks for the communications industry, it was this: stop selling comfort.

As Edelman’s data shows, three-quarters of people believe insularity must be addressed. Clegg’s intervention suggests the harder truth is that addressing it means dealing with economics, politics and power – not just platforms.

Or, as he put it, with characteristic bluntness: “Once you’re honest about what the problems actually are, people become creative. But as long as we pretend there’s a magic technical fix, we’re lying to ourselves.”

For a conversation about trust, that may be the most uncomfortable – and useful – place to end.