I'm asking for a friend who's currently in life sci. they want to take a 2nd year humanities/soc sci course but they don't know which one would be easy for them plus wouldn't require registration into that program. thanks!

Tell them to look in the course calendar to see which ones are open to them, and which seem interesting, and then to look at course reviews on here for those courses.

Claaaassic. A simple search for "easy electives" on this forum, would've returned the exact same answer every time: It's easier if it's interesting; "ease" depends on the person and their interests.

So it's unfortunate that it's your friend you're asking for, and not yourself, because if it were yourself, then you might have followed up your question with a list of your interests...