Earlier this month, Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy announced his New Year’s resolution.
“I plan to become a social-media teetotaler in 2026,” he wrote in an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, announcing that he had deleted X and Instagram from his phone. His campaign team would still distribute messaging online, he said, but he would not spend his own time scrolling.
Integral to his decision was his concern that social media was alienating him from the voters he hopes to serve in the governor’s mansion. “Modern social media is increasingly disconnected from the electorate,” the Republican wrote. “The messages you’re most likely to see are the most negative and bombastic, because they’re most likely to receive rapid ‘likes’ and ‘reposts’—and that drives revenue for social media content creators.”
Though Ramaswamy’s commitment was new this year, some in Congress have previously sworn off social media, recognizing that it is an untrustworthy barometer of what their constituents think that also distracts them from their most important duties.
“I don’t have any social media apps on my phone, except for LinkedIn,” Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts told The Dispatch. Auchincloss revealed that one of his Christmas gifts was a Brick, a device that allows a user to temporarily disable apps by touching their phone to it. To restore the phone’s app functions, the user must physically touch their phone to the device again.
By not being dependent on the digital world, the 37-year-old Democratic congressman said he tries to create a “high-fidelity feedback loop with reality.” He does so by doing in-person events as well as Zoom and telephone town halls, in addition to polling, surveys, and mailers.
“What that does is it gives me an authentic pulse on the district, as opposed to, if you spend all your time on social media, you get a highly distorted view of what the electorate thinks,” he said.
The recognition on the part of Auchinloss and other members of Congress who spoke to The Dispatch that social media, which they are tasked with regulating, often does not mimic real life is a sign that members of Congress are aware of the hazards of digitized politics. Some are willing to mitigate its effects in their own lives.
Sen. Andy Kim of New Jersey said he made an effort to cut back on social media after winning election to the Senate in 2024. To avoid the temptation of checking his social media feeds too often, he deleted all such apps on his phone, and now he says he spends “maybe 10 minutes” on it per day, looking at social media on his computer in the morning and at night.
“I finished the election and just felt like I wasn’t happy with who I was and how much time I was spending on social media, as opposed to [with] my 8-year-old and my 10-year-old,” he told The Dispatch. “I found it to be distracting. Even when I’m with my kids, I would just find myself looking at my phone, and I was not being a present father for them.”
But cutting off from social media is difficult in a political world that privileges online communication. So much breaking news is disseminated first on social media, and much of the political discourse lives there, so many involved in the day-to-day runnings of Capitol Hill feel like they have no choice but to use and engage in it.
“X is just a dumpster fire that is mostly designed to inflame the media and politicos,” Rep. Dusty Johnson, a Republican running for governor of South Dakota, told The Dispatch. “But I’ve got to be there, because that’s where you gather intelligence on what the media and the politicos are thinking.” Johnson added that he spends about an hour a day in total on social media for personal use, such as keeping up with friends and family, but said that work drives much of his use of the networks. He has made an effort in the past year to moderate his social media use, he said, especially cutting back on consuming “these stupid little videos and ‘reels’ one after another,” which can easily eat up time.
While social media is a useful tool for politicians, it can also influence them to be more divisive and provocative, hurting their chances of passing their own legislation or influencing that of others. Needlessly offending fellow legislators can be costly, especially in a legislative branch that thrives on lawmakers’ personal relationships and trust in one another—to say nothing of the risks of alienating voters.
“It changes the incentive structures here in Congress,” said Kim. “You feel a desire to say things that’ll increase your followers and get more retweets.”
One of the heaviest users of social media in Congress is Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who posts on X abundantly under his personal handle, “@BasedMikeLee.” His rate of social media activity was already high when Joe Biden was president, and it increased significantly when Donald Trump took office for his second term. In 2024, Lee posted an average of 36 times per day, but he increased to 100 times each day in the first four months of 2025, according to an analysis from the Salt Lake City Tribune.
Last year, his social media activity caused friction with some of his Senate colleagues. He made a series of inflammatory posts claiming, without evidence, that a Minnesota man charged with shooting state Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in June 2025 had ties to the left. Minnesota Sens. Tina Smith and Amy Klobuchar both spoke to Lee about his posts, and he took them down. Lee’s office did not respond to The Dispatch’s request for comment about his social media habits.
Lawmakers will often have two accounts on X—a government one for publicizing their official business in the Capitol and a personal one for posting fundraising pleas, campaign stops, and their political commentary.
Lee’s response on his personal account stood in sharp contrast to that of his government account, which condemned “this senseless violence,” which has “no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America.”
Like many of their constituents, some lawmakers acknowledge they use social media a bit too much. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii, who is in line to be the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate next Congress, said he is “on social more than I should be” but added he had no plans to get off or cut back.
“I have my prompts that tell me when I reach my limit, and I sometimes ignore the prompt, and I sometimes don’t,” Schatz told The Dispatch.
Some lawmakers were unwilling to reveal specifics about their online habits. Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, who will retire following the 2026 elections, was reluctant to divulge how he uses social media. He told The Dispatch that he spends “as little [time] as I can” on the networks per day but refused to say whether he had apps installed on his phone. “That’s no one’s business,” he said. Rep. Joe Neguse of Colorado referred The Dispatch to his office, which did not provide a comment by press time.
Peters and Neguse are the Democrats in the Senate and House who had the most bills signed into law in the 118th Congress, a testament to their ability to work across the aisle and pass legislation through an often polarized legislature. Logic would dictate that the lawmakers who spend the least amount of time using social media would be more effective at getting legislation passed, but that doesn’t appear to be the case, judging by the Republicans who are most productive in that regard.
“I’m a frequent user of X and Twitter,” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas told The Dispatch. “But originally, my involvement on Twitter was: It’s a great way for me to communicate with my constituents about things that I think are important that they may have missed, points of view that they wouldn’t likely hear a lot about just because of how difficult it is to cut through the chatter and everything else going on.”
Still, Cornyn added that he tries not to engage with users individually and was cognizant of the deleterious effects of social media platforms. “I think it’s useful, but I think, unfortunately, there are aspects of social media that I think are corrosive, particularly to younger people.”
Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, the House Republican who had the most bills signed into law last term and is now in his fifth and final term representing a swing district, also has a noticeable online footprint on his congressional and personal X accounts, from which he will both post about serious political issues and engage in light-hearted interactions with individual users. He recounted a time in which a woman tweeted at him, “F— you,” and he replied, “No thanks. I’m married.”
“I like teasing people,” he told The Dispatch.
Bacon added that he checks social media when he wakes up in the morning, before he goes to bed, and “if I’m bored and in between meetings.” He did, however, note the drawbacks of being online.
“I do think I should read more,” he said. “I’ve always got a book. And I find if I’m reading my social media, I’m not reading something that’s better.”
While some members of Congress may weigh the pros and cons of social media activity, the answer is easy for Rep. Jared Golden of Maine, a Democrat who will retire at the end of the year after representing a Trump-voting district for four terms. He told The Dispatch he does not use any social media and has not for years.
“I think social media sucks,” he said.
His team posts on social media on his behalf, and he puts the responsibility of messaging squarely on his staff.
“I’m focused on getting things done, doing the work, governing. It’s their job to do press, comms, all that stuff,” he told The Dispatch. “It’s not my top priority by any means.”
