Americans reported losing $2.1 billion to scams that started on social media in 2025, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Nearly 30% of people who reported losing money to any type of scam said the initial contact came through a social media platform. Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram topped the list of platforms where those scams began, and the total dollar losses are now eight times what they were in 2020.
Social media scam losses hit $2.1 billion as platforms fail to slow the surge
The FTC’s April 2026 Data Spotlight puts a sharp number on a problem that has grown every year this decade. Reported losses totaling $2.1 billion in 2025 represent an eightfold increase from 2020 levels, a pace that has outstripped the growth in overall fraud reporting. For context, the FTC recorded 6.5 million fraud reports in 2024, and total reported fraud losses that year reached $12.5 billion after a 25% jump driven partly by a larger share of victims actually sending money. In 2023, 27% of fraud reporters lost money; by 2024, that figure rose to 38%.
The question for platform operators is whether any product change can bend this curve. Facebook had the highest number of social media scam reports, followed by WhatsApp and then Instagram. All three are owned by Meta. A reasonable test of platform accountability would be whether services that roll out verified-business labeling or similar trust signals show measurable drops in new loss reports within a year, independent of the FTC’s overall reporting volume. So far, no public data from any platform demonstrates that kind of result, and the eight-times increase since 2020 suggests that existing safety features have not kept pace with scam activity.
The FTC has been warning for several years that social feeds have become fertile ground for fraudsters. In an earlier analysis covering 2021 through mid-2023, the agency reported that consumers had already lost $2.7 billion to social media scams, with investment cons driving the largest dollar losses and shopping hoaxes accounting for the most individual complaints. That earlier warning, detailed in an FTC release from 2023, now looks more like a baseline than a peak.
Investment fraud and romance schemes drive the largest dollar losses
Investment scams and romance fraud account for the biggest shares of money lost through social media. The FTC noted that nearly 60% of romance-scam losses started on social platforms, a pattern consistent with earlier agency findings. Between 2021 and October 2023, consumers had already reported losing $2.7 billion to social media scams, with investment schemes claiming the largest share of dollars even then and shopping scams generating the most individual reports.
The mechanics are straightforward. Scammers use social feeds, direct messages, and fake profiles to build trust before steering victims toward fraudulent investment platforms or fabricated romantic relationships that end in financial requests. They often mirror legitimate branding, copy real profiles, or infiltrate interest groups where people expect to find like-minded communities rather than con artists. Once a target is engaged, criminals gradually escalate the pressure, pushing high-return “opportunities” or urgent pleas for help that are hard to verify from behind a screen.
Younger adults, who use social platforms at higher rates according to Pew Research survey data, face greater exposure to these schemes simply because they spend more time in the environments where scammers operate. They are more likely to encounter bogus investment pitches wrapped in influencer-style content or to respond to direct messages that appear to come from friends. But the FTC’s data also shows that older adults tend to lose larger amounts per incident, meaning the financial pain spreads across age groups in different ways. For older users, romance fraud and impersonation of family members or trusted institutions can be especially costly.
The cumulative toll is staggering. Adding the $2.7 billion reported from 2021 through mid-2023 to the $2.1 billion in 2025 alone illustrates that social media fraud has become one of the most expensive digital crime channels tracked by federal regulators. And because FTC figures rely on people taking the time to file complaints, the real losses are almost certainly higher. Many victims never report what happened, either out of embarrassment, confusion about where to turn, or a belief that nothing can be done to recover the money.
For platforms, the numbers raise uncomfortable questions about design choices that make scams easier to run at scale. Recommendation algorithms that prioritize engagement can amplify sensational investment claims or emotionally charged posts from fake accounts. Frictionless messaging tools allow scammers to blast out thousands of invitations in minutes. Marketplaces and group features, meanwhile, can blur the line between personal interactions and commercial solicitations, leaving users to sort out which offers are legitimate.
Consumer advocates argue that meaningful progress will require more than reactive content moderation or user-education campaigns. Stronger verification for advertisers, clearer labeling of commercial content, and default limits on unsolicited direct messages are among the measures experts say could reduce exposure. Regulators, for their part, are likely to keep pressing for better data and faster responses from the companies whose products now sit at the center of so many fraud stories.
For individual users, the guidance remains blunt: be skeptical of investment opportunities or romantic overtures that begin with an unexpected message or friend request; verify identities through a second channel before sending money; and treat any request to move conversations off a major platform and onto encrypted apps or obscure websites as a red flag. As the FTC’s latest numbers make clear, the cost of assuming good faith in social feeds is rising, and so far the tools meant to keep people safe are losing ground to the scams they are supposed to stop.
