Social Media and How it Contributes to Echo Chambers

The internet is filled with a slew of viewpoints and perspectives that are readily available with just a simple google search. This overwhelming amount of information can lead to people actively seeking out only the viewpoints they agree with and are subsequently subject to confirmation bias. Social media can amplify this by their use of intelligent algorithms.

The social media algorithms are designed to recommend us content that we may be interested in based on our likes and what content we consume. This is an effective way of keeping us on the platform for longer so we consume more and more content and see more ads. This has an adverse effect as the algorithm only shows us content that we agree with. We never see the other side of the argument, but rather only what we want to hear. This devolves into an 'echo chamber' situation.

An echo chamber is an environment in which a person encounters only beliefs or opinions that coincide with their own so that their existing views are reinforced and alternative ideas are not considered. So basically, an echo chamber is an environment created online in which only a certain side of the argument is repeatedly shown which reinforces beliefs in that particular viewpoint. Examples of this include Facebook pages about a certain political party, Anti-Vax forums, and a subreddit for pro-gun discussion.

Echo chambers contribute to ill-informed opinions and disallow challenging thoughts and dissenting ideas. They limit opportunities for healthy debates and necessary discussions, while also limiting our ability to properly dissect ideas and solve problems. They promote confirmation bias, or the tendency to view evidence as confirmation of one's existing beliefs when the reality is more complicated. 

For example, some people believe the earth to be flat. In online forums for this, many share resources echoing this same idea. Most people on the platform never get to see any positions that challenge their beliefs, and so cannot properly evaluate their opinions. They also get recommended posts by prominent flat earth advocates on their social media, as the algorithm picks up on this and tailors their feed accordingly. They become trapped in an echo chamber and see the same repeating theme of a flat earth over and over again.

The Dunning-Kruger effect is one of the main contributing factors that leads people to form echo chambers in the first place.

The Dunning Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people with limited knowledge in a certain field significantly overestimate their knowledge in that field relative to others. Basically, people who don’t know much believe they know a lot more than they really do. In 1999, Cornell University psychologists, David Dunning and Justin Kruger released a paper in which they tested participants on their logic, grammar, and sense of humor. They found that people who performed below average rated their skills as above average. In another study, Engineers were asked about how well they do in a software company. 42% of them said they are in the top 5% among their colleagues. 88% of American drivers rated their driving as above average (50%). None of these are mathematically possible.

On social media, most people consider themselves to know more than they actually do because they don’t know how much is left to learn. With this limited information, they make misleading content, spread fake news, and harass anyone they don’t agree with. An example of this is anti-vaxxers who don’t know much about virology and vaccines but go onto social media and spread unverified information about vaccines and claim it to cause diseases such as autism. 

The Dunning Kruger effect has also reduced the credibility of scientists as many people do not understand the complex nature of their work and label their findings as a hoax.

This, combined with a phenomenon known as The Vocal Minority allows Echo Chambers to thrive. The vocal minority is a small group of people who regularly voice their opinions, as compared to the silent majority (ie. the large group of people who don’t tend to relay their opinions often). Vocal minorities consisting of people who are already in an echo chamber pop up and relay their opinions on a certain topic that they may not be well read about (due to the Dunning-Kruger effect). This contributes to misinformation and other people being dragged into an echo chamber and the social media algorithms make sure that they stay in the echo chamber.

Another problem is that people nowadays tend to only glance at the title of content before sharing it with others, further amplifying the effect of echo chambers and promoting misinformation. Titles can be deceiving (or ‘clickbait') and hyper-sensationalized, mainly due to the rise of competition in the media industry and how easy it is to create media content. People are satisfied knowing the bare minimum. They are satisfied reading a few sentences. This is probably the greatest threat to our current age of information.

All of this leads to bias formation. Once a bias has formed, it is extremely difficult to get rid of it. “For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” ― H. L. Mencken writes. We love making generalizations to make sense of the world, but usually, the world cannot be summed up so easily. We also react to messages we receive in our environment, those messages usually lie under the surface. We like to stereotype people and expect them to conform to those stereotypes, for example, men are expected to be assertive, strong, and void of many emotions, and any man that doesn’t fit this stereotype is labeled a 'beta’ man. Social media makes all of this very easy and very fast, to the point where we don’t even realize it's happening. Most of us have many implicit biases that unconsciously affect our everyday lives. Implicit bias refers to attitudes we hold within, but are generally not aware of. This manifests in actions such as walking faster past a young man of another race while alone at night, or thinking “That overweight person really shouldn’t be eating all that”.

Bias is really hard to break away from, be it implicit or explicit, but I think that awareness and education is the best way to do just that.

Social media can be very helpful when connecting us to friends, family, and the rest of the world, but it can also be very negative. We can do the following to alleviate its adverse effects: 

• Be aware of how social media impacts our perception of the world.
• Recognize echo chambers and eliminate them.
• Diversify information sources.
• Read up as much as we can.
• Verify information before sharing it.