We’re Not as Divided as Our Feeds Make Us Feel

We don’t dislike each other nearly as much as social media tells us we do.

It’s the truth.

People aren’t nearly as cold as they seem online either.

When The Challenger space shuttle blasted off in 1986, I was in grade school watching the historical event with the rest of my classmates – huddled around the box TV the teachers had rolled into the classroom.

Our anticipation oozed into one another, making the experience all the more exciting … and the shuttle’s immediate demise all the more devasting.

The whole world was watching the same event – so the whole world stopped when the shuttle burst into flames.  

In the classroom, our young brains didn’t know how to comprehend such a tragedy. Most of us had never seen anything like that before. But because of the pace of life back then, our teachers and parents had time to talk with us and help us process what we had seen and what it meant. It was horrible, but our brains and hearts were given time to process it.

Today, people – even little kids – see these kinds of disasters in our feed every day. When our brains are hit over and over and over again with chaos, tragedy, loss, and hate, it’s almost as though we have to grow cold to survive. And empathy can go out the window because feeling each tragedy could render some of us helpless.

And then there’s the division being caused … before, it was easy to have a friend on the other side of the political aisle or following a different religion. We just didn’t talk about it! And it was good!

Not so much today – social media wants us at each other’s throats.

Let’s make this simple and say we each have 10 qualities that make up who we are. And then let’s posit we have 7 out of 10 in common with the people we routinely spend time with. When we’re together and focus on the 7, we can get along just fine – actually quite happily – with each other.

But not when we head onto social media! That’s because these platforms want us emotional. They want us aggravated ... because it makes us stay and fight.

How do they accomplish this? One tactic is to purposefully shove the 3 things we don’t have in common down each other’s throats. They push us to focus on our differences and are quick to showcase the “other side” as crazy, stupid … even evil.

Our time on the platforms is their profit – tragedy makes us stay, anger makes us stay, fighting in the comments section makes us stay. So they’re happy to push this content.

But how is any of this possibly helpful, healthy, or productive for us?

It’s not.

At all.

Instead, it’s yet another reason for each of us to be more intentional about how much time we’re spending online, what we’re doing when we’re there, and what we’re being fed.

The good news is that we can take control over what the algorithm feeds us (see some ways to hack your algorithm here).

The better news is we can put our phone down, spend time with others, and bond over the beautiful things we have in common.

That’s what is healthy, helpful, and productive.

That’s what feeds our souls.

That’s what brings back our humanity.