Social media is an essential part of life in the modern age which has managed to create a virtually interconnected world of communication. Hence, it is affecting countries‟ politics, economy, culture, academy, religion, lifestyles, etc. in the present day world. Likewise, its ever-growing impacts are knocking the doors of legal systems across the globe by triggering important legal concerns including that of human rights. Hence, speaking globally, the interplay between social media and human rights is increasingly becoming a focal point of researches and debates. In Ethiopia, despite the absence of a well refined body of research on the topic, there has been growing controversies on, inter alia, the social media‟s impacts on human rights and the necessity or otherwise of regulating it especially after the government announced its plan to regulate social media activities. The fact that these discussions and deliberations are oftentimes made based on political motivations, preconceptions and prejudices rendered the subject obscure despite the intriguing nature of the questions it involves. Hence, this study attempts to fill the gap in the existing body of knowledge by assessing the interplay between social media and human rights in the country. Having explored and analyzed wide area of doctrines, experiences, perspectives and trends that surround the topic both at the international and the national contexts on the basis of data collected through document analyses, interview, observation, social media contents analyses and visual analyses, this study makes the case that social media‟s impacts on human rights in Ethiopia are threefold – i) it underpins the enjoyment of human rights; ii) it buttresses the promotion of human rights; and, iii) it serves as a tool of human rights violation/abuse. Furthermore, this study contends that the regulation of social media activities (particularly, hate speech and false information) is justifiable on account of the state‟s duty to protect and individuals‟ obligation to respect human rights– stressing, however, that such move towards enacting a law should be backed by some additional measures. Hence, this study urges on the state to work on seeking political solutions to settle root causes of problems; enhance cooperation with social media companies; and, raise users‟ digital literacy so as to mitigate the social media‟s adverse impacts on human rights and maintain its positive contributions in the long run. 1