Social Media and Extremism

Over the last two decades, the internet has taken off exponentially only becoming more and more popular. Within just the last decade, the explosion of social media has made communication between strangers (especially with anonymity) sky rocket. We have seen people's stances on politics become more aggresive and extreme. Allowing anonymous arguement has seemed to polarize people more than ever before.

Social Media

Social Implications

In current social media culture, civil debate is almost never the first path taken when disagreements between users take place. It is very much who can be more the louder, more insulting person. I believe this leads to serious implications as a culture about how we deal with conflict in our lives. It is important to check ourselves in how we analyze arguments we see take place and question our personal train of thought when we are in a disagreement with someone.

Economical Implications

While I believe economic implications is not exactly directed related to the issue of social media and extremism, there are some thoughts we can consider. One idea is that owners of social media giants end goal is to keep users active as long possible. This how they can expose more ads and make more money. The toxic culture of social media debates often gets people intrigued and can be very popular. It seems very likely that these companies would want to push high engagement content regardless of the negative background.

Political Implications

Many people are familiar with the hostile debates that take place on social media over political issues. The poppularity of this content is shown in youtube compilations of "Ben Sharpiro Owning Liberals!" or viral videos of blasting "F--- Donald Trump, at local Trump Ralley." This culture has really pushed people to a perspective of us versus them. We are opposing teams who have to fight each other which in my personal opinion does not do much for progress.

Conclusion

The anonymity and invincibility that social media often offers has made it so people have heated debates, that attack the person and not the argument. This type of content is often very popular as people would like to weigh in their opinion. This has created what seems to be one of the divise political climates where the extremes of both sides seem to be whats publicized often creating strong feelings of us versus them.