From doomscrolling to echo chambers and algorithms, social media has a fair amount to account for when it comes to influencing people’s view of society and others. Alexander “Zander” Kuebler, finalist in the 2024 CoBS CSR Student Article Competition at ESSEC Business School, tackles the issue of social media’s role in political polarization.  

Blame the Apps, Not Each Other: Social media’s leading role in political polarization by Zander Kuebler.

“Some people say that the problem is that social networks are polarizing us, but that’s not at all clear from the evidence or research.” So said Facebook (now Meta) CEO Mark Zuckerberg in his March 2021 testimony on social media’s involvement in the January 6th U.S. Capitol insurrection. Mr. Zuckerberg was confident that his social media apps were not at fault for exacerbating political extremism. Now, three years removed from his testimony, amid arguably the most tumultuous geopolitical landscape in recent history (Ukraine vs. Russia, Israel vs. Palestine, etc.), media experts and politicians revisit the question of social media’s impact on the alarmingly swift rise of global political polarization.

On a Global Scale, We Are More Divided Than Ever

When Oscar Wilde shared his infamous “Everything in moderation” philosophy, he surely had not experienced the world of modern politics. The worldwide share of voters who identify as “moderate,” historically the most common identifier, is among the lowest ever at just a third (Winograd and Hais, 2024). Consequently, the number of voters who identify as “conservative” or “liberal” are both at all-time highs (Pew Research Center, 2023).

It’s not only the moderates who are shrinking. One step further from the center of the political spectrum lie the semi-moderates; the slightly party-affiliated voters who historically compose the majority of “swing votes” in elections (Kuriwaki, 2021). That population has nearly ceased to exist in the last two decades: In the U.S. in 2014, 92% of Republicans were to the right of the median Democrat, and 94% of Democrats were to the left of the median Republican, nearly 30% leaps for both parties compared to 1994 (Pew Research Center, 2014).

Notably, animosity between different dimensions of the political spectrum is also climbing at striking rates. That same 2014 Pew Research Center study found that more than twice the share of respondents for both American political parties held a “very unfavorable” attitude toward the opposing party than before the turn of the century. Across Europe, this trend is maintained, though not quite so significantly, with the share of partisan voters growing year-over-year in the majority of European nations (Reiljan, 2023).

With a diminishing proportion of moderates and a migration toward both extremes from the partisans, there is dwindling centrist support, making bipartisan policy-making harder than ever (Drutman, 2021). This means less gets done. The U.S. Congress passed only 27 bills in 2023, the least since the Great Depression (Warburton, 2024). For context, the 2021 Congress passed 364 bills, making a 1,300% drop off in two years (Statista, 2021). From spending packages to social reforms, the hyperpolarization of governing bodies is stifling opportunity for immeasurable change. Polarization is, from all angles, killing democracy.

Theorists point to a variety of different justifications for this growing divide, including growing economic disparity, the increased prevalence of “identity-threatening” issues such as religion, and more (Achenbach, 2024). Although not insignificant today, shifts in economic disparity and “identity-threatening” issues have been cyclical drivers of political separation throughout history (Barber and McCarty, 2015). However, one source has catalyzed polarization in the last five years to an unmatched degree: Social media.

From Engagement to Extremism: Social media and how the algorithms polarize us

“Doomscrolling” describes a newsreader’s tendency to delve into perpetually discouraging and partisan news content (Cambridge, 2024). To grasp how social media impacts political polarization, it is important to start with the algorithms that incite this “doomscrolling.” Social media algorithms are designed to prioritize content that generates the most user interaction, such as likes, shares, and comments (Brady, 2023). The logic behind this design is straightforward: More engagement translates to users spending more time on the platform, thus increasing exposure to paid advertisements. This approach inherently favors content that provokes strong emotional reactions, as emotion is what best engages users (Shaw, 2023). The more egregious the content’s claim, the stronger users feel about it. This means that, as a result, these algorithms consistently thrust divisive or sensational content into the spotlight.

This phenomenon is worsened by the “media echo chamber,” a term used to describe the effects of regularly consuming content and opinions from like-minded individuals or pages. The algorithms work hard to avoid challenging users’ existing beliefs, as being challenged is a go-to reason to close the app (Wu, 2019). This means minimizing opposing viewpoints while spoon-feeding users content that mirrors their pre-existing preferences (Nyhan et al., 2023). Users do not click away when what they are seeing validates what they already believe, allowing confirmation bias to run rampant. Once again, efforts at keeping users engaged inadvertently polarize them.

Echo chambers and their ability to drive extremism is not a new concept. Long before the speed of information reached the milliseconds of a Google search or a Facebook scroll, towns and cities had extreme political correlation within their borders, and polarization beyond borders (Bimber, 1998). This is logical: Everyone absorbed the information they had access to, leading to similar conclusions. However, with this lack of access to information came an understanding of limited scope and space for individualized interpretations that have waned in today’s political discourse. Now, with much of the Western world having access to the same sources, including social media, users cannot comprehend how anyone experiencing content from the same source could feel so differently. Data backs this trend: Across the U.S. and Europe, those who identify as most politically engaged also share the perception that political polarization is at the most staggering extremes (Kleinfeld, 2023). In other words, as more and more people fall victim to their own respective echo chambers, the “other side” seems further and further from reasonable.

It’s Time for Big Tech to Stop ‘Buffering’

As polarization worsens, no matter the intentions behind these algorithms, social media heavily contributes to partisanism. In the same aforementioned 2021 testimony, Mr. Zuckerberg said, “The reality is our country is deeply divided right now, and that isn’t something that tech companies alone can fix.” Mr. Zuckerberg’s pessimism is publicly shared across the social media space. Whether it’s in testimony to the House of Representatives or elsewhere, Meta, Google, and the rest of Big Tech continue to beat around the bush on reforming its systems to combat polarization. While these giants buffer, political theorists have landed on a variety of solutions Big Tech can implement to reduce its effect on the growing political divide.

Transparency is the first and most obvious path social media companies can take. The specifics of how their algorithms rank, recommend, and remove content are considered proprietary, and therefore remain undisclosed (Mostert and Urbelis, 2021). Users and lawmakers alike lack insight on how the platforms function and therefore struggle to hold these media giants accountable for the content they display to their users. Industry-wide disclosure of how these algorithms operate could clue the world in on how to properly combat the harmful effects. Unless governments and consumers intensify their demands for transparency, tech corporations are likely to continue implementing band-aid solutions that only address the trending issues, satisfying the most critical concerns without fundamentally altering their operations or impact.

In hand with transparency, governments can collaborate to create global restraints on social media algorithms. Enforced regulation of extremism on social media platforms is not novel; the past five years have seen governments across the world urge social media companies to actively manage and cooperate with law enforcement on terror-related threats on their platforms (Fishman, 2023). Setting benchmarks for general extremism will prove to be a delicate operation, as data privacy and free speech are threatened by any kind of social media regulation. However, Big Tech’s reluctance to make these changes on its own stems from concerns over potentially diminishing user engagement, and therefore profitability (Barrett et al., 2024). Without widespread, collaborative regulation from authorities, social media will continue to disunite the global masses. With the divide only getting wider, politicians must overcome the gap to bring about a change.

In the Meantime, Blame the Apps, Not Each Other

Caught up in our respective media echo chambers, it becomes increasingly difficult to empathize across political divides. While we wait for consumers and regulators to catch up and incite action, remember to fault the apps and their polarizing ways before blaming one another for differences of opinion. With time and activism, social media’s responsibility in political polarization will further come to light. By holding social media companies accountable, reform on a fundamental level will limit further polarization, and with luck, gradually reunite our divided population.

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