Nearly 30% of US consumers who reported losing money to a scam said that it started on social media, with reported losses reaching a staggering $2.1bn, according to data from the US Federal Trade Commision (FTC).
Social media scams produced far more in losses – an eightfold increase since 2020 – than any other contact method used by scammers to reach consumers, with the Data Spotlight also noting that social media creates easy access to billions of people from anywhere in the world, making a scammer’s job easier at very little cost.
Scammers may hack a user’s account, exploit what a user posts to figure out how to target them, or buy ads and use the same tools used by real businesses to target people by age, interests or shopping habits.
Reports show that in 2025, people reported losing more money to scams that started on Facebook than on any other social media platform. WhatsApp and Instagram were a distant second and third. In 2025, people reported losing far more money to scams on Facebook alone than they reported losing to text or email scams.
The data also show that all age groups, with the exception of those 80 and over, reported losing more money to scams that started on social media than any other contact method. And social media ranked second after phone calls for those 80 and over.
According to FTC data, social media scams come in different forms, including:
- Investment scams: People reported losing the most amount of money last year to investment scams that originated on social media, with losses of $1.1 billion, more than half of the total amount lost to social media scams, according to FTC data. These scams often started with an ad or post offering a program to teach you how to invest. Other scammers posed as friendly advisers or created WhatsApp groups full of “successful investors” sharing fake testimonials.
- Shopping scams: Shopping scams were the most reported type of social media scam last year, with more than 40% of people who lost money to a scam on social media reporting that they ordered something they saw in a social media ad—everything from clothes and makeup to car parts and even puppies. Many of these ads led to unfamiliar websites, while others sent people to sites impersonating well-known brands that claimed to offer big discounts.
- Romance scams: Reports show romance scams also thrive on social media—nearly 60% of people who reported losing money to a romance scam in 2025 said it started on a social media platform. According to reports, scammers often tailored their pitch based on people’s profiles, later inventing a crisis requiring money or casually offering investment advice to draw them onto a fake investment platform.
But for some consumer champions this is a massive problem. Proxyware, a digital citizen protection company dedicated to safeguarding vulnerable populations, sees huge risks in social media companies not being careful enough or held accountable for their security absences.
Sarah Ralston, Chief Product Officer at Proxyware, comments: “The FTC’s finding that Americans lost $2.1 billion to social media scams in 2025, an eightfold increase, should end the industry’s ‘consumer education’ response once and for all. When over 40% of victims were defrauded through ads the platforms themselves approved and monetized, this stops being a user awareness problem and becomes a supply chain integrity failure. Facebook alone drove more scam losses than all text and email scams combined, not because users weren’t careful enough, but because platforms profit from the same ad infrastructure that bad actors exploit. Until social media companies are held to the same third-party verification standards we demand from every other media channel, $2.1 billion is just a down payment on next year’s losses.”
