When the Void Yells Back: A Look at Algorithmic Echo Chambers
A friend of mine went on a date last week with a boy she met through an online dating app. She gleefully noted to me that he had selected “Liberal” as his political party in his bio, so she was confident they’d get along.
He turned out to be the biggest asshole she’d met in months.
As participants in the great expanse of the internet, we each have access to millions of people, faces, voices, opinions, just seconds away from our fingertips. We favor those who appear to think similarly to ourselves, because we find comfort and validation in the opinions we share with others. It’s human nature to seek out people who seem like-minded. Birds of a feather flock together, and girls who wear eyeliner follow each other on Instagram.
However, this adage prescribes a misleading phenomenon that can be dangerous advice on the internet. Have you ever caught yourself feeling like you only see a handful of similar opinions and videos on your social media apps? Often, it can seem like short-form media platforms like TikTok and Instagram just recommend recycled monotonous content with no variety. This is what’s commonly referred to as an “echo chamber”: when all the content you’re suggested is similar to media you’ve already seen.
While these echo chambers can seem, and often are, personalized and fun, they can be incredibly destructive when we get cut off from opposing viewpoints. People fall into these echo chambers when the algorithms used to push content identify a specific ideology being interacted with. These algorithms then recommend more content that aligns with that doctrine, because they know the users already agree with it. Because algorithms refuse to recommend media opposing a user’s defined opinions, they lose access to opposing viewpoints, trapped in algorithmic echo chambers.
When people use short-form media platforms as news sources, these online echo chambers create space for users to become fully entrenched in their previously held ideals. Instead of being flexible to adapting to new information, users’ ideologies are calcified and polarized against conflicting viewpoints. We live in a nation where politics are more polarized than ever, with Americans more likely to condone violence for political purposes and less willing to socialize across party lines. The extremization of ideology from echo chambers of short-form media platforms leads to severe polarization of young people.
When we are as deeply politically divided as we are, we lose the ability to see people we disagree with as human beings. Fighting for equality and progress are non-negotiable, but we cannot lose sight of the very people we fight for. We cannot shut out entire portions of the population because we disagree. It is integral to progress that we communicate with those we differ from, and seek to educate ourselves from an objective standpoint.
So where does this leave us in terms of TikTok and Instagram? Well, user @succitboyos says it best: “If you’re on social media a lot and start agreeing with everything you’re seeing, it’s time to get off for a while.”
Works Cited
Cover Photo: https://cubiclerefugee.tumblr.com/post/39854227414
Diamond, Larry. “Americans Increasingly Believe Violence Is Justified If the Other Side Wins.” Politico, 1 Oct. 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/01/political-violence-424157. Accessed 5 Feb. 2023.
Iyengar, Shanto, and Sean J. Westwood. “Fear and Loathing across Party Lines: New Evidence on Group Polarization.” American Journal of Political Science, vol. 59, no. 3, pp. 690–707, https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12152. Accessed 5 Feb. 2023.
Sleeman, Samuel Peter, and Broc Rademan. “Freedom from Social Echo Chambers: Policy Implications of an Algorithmic Bias.” SSRN Electronic Journal, 2017, https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3044265.
Walker, Mason, and Katerina Eva Matsa. “News Consumption across Social Media in 2021.” Pew Research Center's Journalism Project, 20 Sept. 2021, https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/2021/09/20/news-consumption-across-social-media-in-2021/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2023.