Creating a new social media for the democracy we need

We've got to find a way to bring the same pieces together in a brand new way. (The pieces are us.)

In 2025, more of us are realizing that it’s up to us to constructively co-create a democracy that serves us best. Even a year ago, too many of us related to democracy as consumers — “I don’t like how democracy is working. I’m going to register a complaint” — but the extreme events of this year have increasingly made that mindset a thing of the past. If there is one silver lining in America right now, it's this rediscovery of our agency and power as citizens.

People are protesting in record numbers, and this is essential — but it's not enough. To truly save and strengthen our democracy, we need spaces that enable a constructive exchange of ideas across differences. And that means we need alternatives to the social media status quo.

“In the early days of the internet and social media, there was a certain joy at finding new ways to connect and organize and stay informed, there was so much promise. I know, I was there. And right now, just like politics itself, just like our public lives, social media has a grimness to it. We’re so fatalistic about the steady stream of bile and vitriol that’s on there. But it doesn’t have to be that way. In fact, if we’re gonna’ succeed, it can’t be that way.” - Barack Obama

As Marshall McLuhan so wisely observed, lo those many years ago, the medium is the message. How we communicate with each other affects what we communicate. We need a social network, then, that encourages not performance, promotion, or competition for “likes” and “follows”...not trolling...but earnest and respectful sharing of and engagement with ideas for the world we wish to live in. We need a place where people feel safe and encouraged to talk about the things that matter to them. We need a medium that incentivizes authenticity, open-mindedness, and respect.

In other words, we need a medium that incentivizes great improvisation.

...Wait, what? What does improv have to do with anything?

Why improv?

Improvisation is the art of creating something from nothing, together, on the fly, without a script. Improv is collaborative, creative, and constructive — qualities that also reflect a democracy at its best. The best improv shows, like the best communities and democracies, reflect a collective genius greater than the sum of their parts.

I want to create a prototype for a new social network whose operating instructions are informed by the wisdom of improvisation. This new space would incentivize participants to build on each other’s ideas in the way that improvisers “yes, and” each other during a show — and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I would interview diverse improvisers to distill key principles that enable successful improvisation. Next, I’d map these principles to design a social network that invites people to engage with each other’s ideas in constructive and creative ways — in the process, practicing and strengthening the skills of active listening, agency, and collaboration required for a thriving democracy.

Why me?

I spent years performing improv comedy. I gave talks at SXSW about applying improv’s lessons to life and work, and was even voted an audience favorite. Earlier this year I published my second book, “Improvising Adulthood: What I Wish Someone Had Told Me.”

But I’m not just an “improv person.” I’m also someone whose career has centered around helping people tell stories online, especially on social media; I’ve given talks on this topic multiple times at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. The former editorial director of PBS.org, I’m an entrepreneur and story coach whose company, Mighty Forces, helps mission-driven leaders change the world by changing the stories they tell. As I tell my clients (who come from organizations like Malala Fund, Melinda French Gates’s Pivotal Ventures, Adobe, the George Lucas Educational Foundation, and TED), we are trying to find the people who are trying to find us — and when we show up authentically and consistently on social media (which, again, is a proxy for the public square), we shine a beacon that helps people find their way to us.

Increasingly, though, our beacons are being obscured — by opaque algorithms, bad actors, corporate interests, the rise in AI-generated content... I could go on. What’s more, too many Americans see social media as a place to build personal brands, rather than connection... to promote themselves, rather than share themselves... to make their lives seem shinier than they are, rather than engaging in conversations about the ideas they spend their days thinking about and grappling with.

The medium is the message. And when improv is the medium — powered by the internet, with its exponential reach and impact — the message is about co-creation, which is just what our democracy needs.

This essay was originally part of my application for a fellowship at Harvard's Applied Social Media Lab, whose mission is to reimagine, rebuild, and reboot social media for the public good. Unfortunately, they lost the funding for their fellowship program, so now I'm sharing these ideas publicly in the hopes that they find their way to an interested funder and/or potential collaborators. Please share this article on your own (highly flawed!) social media, through your newsletters, and with anyone you know who might want to help me bring this vision to life — for all of us.

You may also be interested in an essay I wrote earlier this year, Improvising Democracy.