Abstract: The vulnerability of social ecosystem is an important content and research hotspot of sustainable development. Based on the relevant concepts and theoretical foundations, the research progress of vulnerability at home and abroad was introduced to present the overall history and status quo in this field. Finally, the research progress and hotspots of social ecosystem vulnerability were analyzed by using CiteSpace software through the core collection database of Web of Science and CNKI database. The results showed that: ① In general, the overall research situation in this field was in good condition, with developed countries contributing a lot in the number of published papers, the United States ranking first, and China ranking sixth but with a lower contribution. ② The research hotspots at home and abroad tended to be the same, but in terms of content, foreign countries tended to conduct in-depth research and improvement of theories, definitions, etc., while domestic focused on regional empirical research by using existing frameworks and methods. ③ In the research on the vulnerability of social-ecological systems, foreign countries still focused on “ecosystem” research, while domestic focused on “social system” research.