Social media narrows our worldview

Imagine scrolling through your feed and seeing a post you perceive as untrue or too biased. You hit the “unfollow” or “hide post,” and bang, it is gone. Based on these reactions, social media’s algorithm learns what you like and dislike seeing, starting to adapt the content you receive to your unique interests. You then have the illusion of having this sense of belonging to individuals who share similar purposes.

The flipside of receiving news targeted to your views is that you might narrow yourself into an oversimplified world, overlooking the complexity of facts of authentic human existence. It makes us stay within the comfort zone of our biased ideological views rather than encouraging potential renewal by discovering different and perhaps better ideas. We become more radical, shutting down people or ignoring ideas that do not conform to our worldview.

Each of us desires to belong to a community, but the problem is that we want to do it only with people who agree with us about specific ideas or share particular interests. And this kind of compartmentalized universe tends to divorce us from ourselves and those around us. It prevents us from achieving something universal and accommodating our particularity as distinct persons.