Social vs. Societal

Social

We keep on harping on social issues, social justice, social equality, and so on without pausing for a moment, to ask ourselves the definition of the word social. It seems too simple a task but often we find that we stop after describing the need of a society and the intrinsic nature of the human beings to live in the company of others. The great philosopher and sociologist Karl Marx described human beings as social beings who thrived on interaction and cooperation and could not survive alone. The subject matter of the field of study called sociology is mostly about society made up of human beings but tries to find out the effects of interactions and relationships of both the society as well as individual members of the society.
More recently, the word social has come to imply matters concerning common people and thus we have concepts like social values, social policies and the social fabric of society. Social is often contrasted with private life or affairs of the individuals though there is another word antisocial to describe to people and activities that are disruptive in nature and have the potential to harm the society on the whole.

Societal

Societal is an English word that is quite old but was not being used much till a few decades ago. In fact, if one looks at searches conducted on Google, he finds that the word social is miles ahead of the word societal that is more used by authors and philosophers. The word societal implies anything relating or pertaining to society. Thus, we talk about societal values, societal changes, societal threats, and so on. However, the word societal has rather restrictive meaning which is of society or about society. Perhaps this is one reason why societal remains in the background only while social is the world that is being used overwhelmingly by all people around the world.