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| La Alhambra, Granada, Spain |
Social
media prompts users to live within echo chambers. Echo chambers are created by
individuals with similar ideologies, reinforcing ideas and inhibiting diversity
of thought.
Within the many social media
platforms, blogs are the most user specific. For every hobby, religion, food
preference and random thought there is blog, which allows an individual to feel
as though they belong. This belonging prioritizes group identity, restricting diversity
of thought and preventing personal development. “Highly cohesive groups
intensely reject deviant individuals,” or ideas that threaten the group’s
values (Gilbert, et al).
Humans naturally oversimplify complex
ideas to make them easier to understand (Baranuik). Social media encourages and
accelerates the simplification process encouraging: “tribalism, insulation” through a diverse selection of news sources (Baranuik). individuals can “cherry-pick”
the information that they are exposed to (Baranuik). Interestingly, the
increase is the diversity of media outlets has decreased diversity of thought
because many social media users are not exposed to information that conflicts
with their beliefs.
The University of Illinois conducted
a study over 1,000 comments placed on the top 33 blogs (Gilbert, et al.). The
semantics of each comment were evaluated using a standardized assessment. Of the
comments studied 49.4% of comments are neutral, 39.2% agreed with the author
and 11.1% disagreed author (Gilbert et. Al). The low controversy in blog comments shows
that blog users rarely follow blogs that they disagree with.
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| With my study tour group in Cordoba, Spain |
Social theorist and utilitarian John
Stuart Mill strongly believed diversity of thought to be “invaluable”
to personal development. In an age of convenience, it is more necessary than
ever to do what is challenging. To create a more equitable and inclusive
society, social media users must step away from comfortable URLS and explore new ideas and ways of thinking.
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| With classmates in historic gypsy caves Granada, Spain |
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