In 2021, 69 percent of American adults used Facebook, 40 percent used Instagram, and 25 percent used LinkedIn, according to the Pew Research Center. Social media users who visited sites daily included almost three-quarters of Facebook users, 59 percent of Snapchat users, 59 percent of Instagram users, and 54 percent of YouTube users.

The proliferation of the public’s use of social media to document things as mundane as what people eat for dinner now means in every case, there is a potential treasure trove of impeachment information available on social media platforms. A personal injury plaintiff’s unabated instinct to impress his social media friends with his exciting, adventurous life following a serious accident may not be consistent with the image he and his lawyer want to paint for jurors. A corporate representative’s attempt to paint his company’s relationship with another company as a formal arms-length relationship may be at odds with photos and posts on social media about vacation trips that high-level managers of the two companies have taken together. And an expert’s ill-advised late night social media posts made after imbibing multiple glasses of Scotch may cause irreparable harm to the expert’s credibility.