Cybersecurity Threats in Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms have evolved from simple networking sites into complex digital ecosystems integral to communication, commerce, and governance.With over 5.22 billion active users globally, these platforms are now prime targets for sophisticated cyber adversaries.This review paper systematically examines the escalating landscape of cybersecurity threats specific to social media environments.Unlike generic cyber threats, social media attacks uniquely exploit human psychology, algorithmic trust, and the architecture of digital social graphs.This paper investigates the evolution of threats including AI-generated disinformation, deepfake impersonation campaigns, account takeover fraud, and the weaponization of platform features for large-scale social engineering.It analyzes the key drivers of threat growth-specifically the democratization of Generative AI and the inadequacy of legacy "informed consent" privacy models.The review synthesizes current mitigation strategies, from phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication to emerging privacy-preserving federated learning architectures for threat detection.It further explores future directions such as decentralized identity protocols and context-aware privacy frameworks.By identifying critical research gaps in crossplatform threat intelligence and behavioral susceptibility models, this study provides a comprehensive foundation for developing resilient, human-centric security postures for the social media ecosystem.