Facebook the hammer that destroys democracy

We all live in a social media and search drive bubble. This bubble is created by Google and Facebook to try and personalize our experiences and in terms of search deliver results that location and search history relevant. In terms of Facebook your bubble is an echo chamber only feeding you like minded ideas, stories, news, etc.

This means you live in a bubble and you are surrounded by people, posts and articles that only strengthen what you think and will feed the negative and extreme outcomes of being “liberal” or “conservative”. Basically, this means if you are a liberal you see liberal news and every click on a liberal news article strengthen your bubble and the same is true for conservative news.

Here is the problem your thoughts are just that thoughts and the best to know if what you think or feel is legitimate is to test it against people that you know do not agree all the time with you. We can all become smarter and wiser by meeting with others and discussing our ideas and in the world of Facebook this function has died. We only see and hear ourselves in our timeline which makes us dumber.

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.” George S. Patton

The best advice to give the collective group is that instead of relying in social media to learn about events gather information from various sources and read them without condemning one over the other. Then go and find friends and strangers and talk, look them in the eyes and discuss your thoughts, feelings and ideas. Engage with people that do not agree with you and do it with respect no matter how frustrated you may feel because there is a good chance you find people have more in common in each others lives that differences that separate us.

The bottom line is we need to find balance again and Facebook and other social media platforms are not going to do it for us, it is not in their self interest.