One way to think about the impact of social media on a person is to think of the two things it does at once.
On the one hand, it keeps feeding you people and content that align with your worldview, confirming what you already believe.
At the same time, it sprinkles in people and content that are the exact opposite, enough to spark outrage. Both extremes generate engagement, so the feed keeps serving both.
No feed is built to make you think better or sharpen your views. It’s built to maximize the hits from confirmation and outrage.
Zoom out to the scale of society, and you get exactly what you’d expect: extreme loyalty to people who already agree with you, and extreme hostility toward everyone who doesn’t.
