April 27, 2026
Social Media Scams Cost Americans $2.1 Billion
Nearly 30% of people reporting a scam loss in 2025 said it began on social media, where reported losses reached $2.1 billion.
Social media has become America’s most expensive front door for scams, and the numbers now make the platform risk impossible to shrug off. In 2025, nearly 30% of people who reported losing money to a scam said it began on social media. Reported losses reached $2.1 billion, according to a new Federal Trade Commission analysis.
Reported losses were eight times the 2020 amount and higher than losses tied to any other contact method. Because most scams are never reported to the government, the actual figure is almost certainly larger. The feed has become a sales floor for fraud.
Targeting Tools
Social platforms give scammers three powerful advantages: reach, personal data, and advertising machinery.
A criminal can study public posts, copy a familiar identity, hack an account, or buy targeted ads using the same demographic and interest filters available to legitimate businesses. The first contact may look like a product recommendation, a new friend, an investment group, or a message from someone the victim already trusts.
In 2025, people reported losing more money to scams that began on Facebook than on any other social platform. WhatsApp and Instagram ranked a distant second and third. Facebook alone produced more reported losses than scams initiated through text or email.
Scam Surge thrives on cheap distribution, built-in personalization, and trust borrowed from a friend, creator, community, or familiar brand.
Investment Traps
Investment scams produced the largest losses. The FTC’s Data Spotlight recorded $1.1 billion in reported losses from social-media investment schemes in 2025, more than half the total.
The pattern often begins with an ad, post, or friendly adviser offering a program for making money. Some schemes move victims into private messaging groups filled with fake success stories and participants who appear to be earning extraordinary returns. By the time the victim discovers the account or platform is false, the money is gone.
Shopping scams generated the largest number of reports. More than 40% of people who lost money to a social-media scam said they had ordered an item promoted in an ad. The offer may lead to an unfamiliar store, a copy of a known retailer, or a steep discount designed to suppress skepticism.
Romance scams also thrive in social settings. Nearly 60% of people reporting a romance-scam loss said the relationship started on a social platform.
Bigger, Faster, Better Dressed
Scams have always followed attention. Social media lets them follow individuals.
The next phase will not necessarily look crude. Synthetic voices, generated images, copied writing styles, and increasingly persuasive chat systems can make impersonation cheaper and more convincing. The FTC’s $2.1 billion figure does not measure AI scams as a separate category, so it should not be presented as an AI-loss total. It does show the size of the distribution system into which those tools are arriving.
Scam Surge will grow by becoming harder to recognize. The pitch will look better. The profile will feel more familiar. The conversation will last longer. The trap will be tailored to the person standing over it.
Social media connects scammers with victims while revealing what each victim is likely to believe.