Is social media reinforcing our prejudices?

 Do social networks reinforce our existing perspective rather than boosting our engagement with diverse perspectives?

On a daily basis, social media influences hundreds of millions of people. On the one hand, we may now be offered an extraordinarily diversified diet of ideas that is unprecedented in human history. On the other hand, social media curation allows us to progressively indulge our prejudices rather than confront them, eliminate opinions we don't agree with, and live in a filter bubble, logging into a so-called "daily me" where the only echo is of voices that sound like us. "We're nurturing ignorance in an era of knowledge," says Frost Included CEO Stephen Frost. "It's a double whammy: not only are we sleepwalking into polarised opinions, but we also believe we're better educated or more impartial than ever before." The problem is worse than we realise, and our willingness to address it is dwindling." Depending on their point of view, everyone witnessed a different reality during the US election. Many others found the results to be diametrically opposed to what they had been seeing in their social media feeds. However, for every person who was astonished by Donald Trump's win, there were an equal number of individuals who were not. That is what stands out about the election: everyone saw a distinct reality based on their world views, which were exacerbated by social media's inclination to reinforce people's pre-existing convictions. This was the first presidential election in the United States in which the majority of voting adults obtained their news via social media. In North America, an estimated 170 million people use Facebook every day, and the site is used by 44 percent of U.S. adults to get their news. However, as Facebook frequently reminds us, it is not in the news business. Facebook and Twitter are in the data and clicks business. Their mission is not to provide balanced news or information that is indicative of what is truly going on in the globe. The latest rash of fake news reports reveals that they aren't really bothered with how accurate or true they are. Their top objective is to provide users with access to the media they desire. It turns out that the stories people prefer are those that support their worldview. Often, a captivating title is all that is required. According to a recent Columbia University research, 59% of links published on the internet are never really read. Users are more likely to click on links that confirm their pre-existing opinions. According to media scholar Douglas Rushkoff, "Facebook is designed to keep you from hearing others." "It generates a false sense of agreement, confirmation bias,' when you only see things that agree with you or make the other side appear absolutely foolish." The problem is that when your pre-existing ideas impact the news you receive, you don't get an accurate picture of what's going on.