A recent study has illuminated the ways in which Facebook and Instagram influenced, and did not influence, political knowledge, polarization, and behavior during the 2020 U.S. presidential election. By deactivating accounts for a portion of participants in the weeks leading up to the election, researchers were able to isolate the effects of these platforms on users’ political engagement and perceptions. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, offers the most extensive evidence to date on how access to social networking platfo…