One of the biggest problems with social media is that it rewards conspiracy theories, and if you read one, it will feed you more. That’s how the algorithm works, it gives you more of what you click on.
They’re aptly titled click-bait because they really are baiting you to click it with outrageous or unbelievable claims and the more of these you read the more that you’ll see.
Social media (and in some respects the internet at large) is trying to get you to spend more time on it. You are the product, and the more you are on it the more money they get from advertising, which is their revenue stream.
I don’t say all this to hate on social media but to point out that when you’re on social media and you’re seeing something everywhere you look it’s easy to imagine that everyone is seeing those same things and if everyone is seeing those same things then how can they not believe it (whatever it is)?
The point is that everyone on social media sees something different.
The articles that are suggested to them, the advertisements they see, even the photos and posts from their friends are customized by algorithms. But we don’t know or realize, or maybe think about the fact that everyone else sees something different so we think ‘How can they believe that, the proof it’s wrong is everywhere!’. They believe it because they’re seeing proof it’s right.
As a result, social media is destroying our ability to empathize with others because the only thing that we’re seeing and reading is proof they’re wrong, so how on earth can we empathize with a stupid person?
Well, they’re thinking the same thing about you.
In the worst cases, which most recently were highlighted in the 2020 US presidential election, it led to hate, rioting, and vitriol being spread like wildfire across the United States.
We are losing our ability to empathize with each other which is dramatically and conspicuously increasing the amount of unresolved interpersonal conflict.
Again I want to emphasize that I am not hating on social media, I use it myself, but it is important to highlight the ways in which it is destroying our ability to empathize with and thus have relationships with other people, specifically those that we disagree with.
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