The Internet is Worse Than Ever – Now What?

Actively examining why you accept or reject information can reduce social media's polarizing effects because changing personal habits is tractable and reveals when you favor a source due to team allegiance rather than the merits of the claim.

The pre-social-media internet avoided some modern harms because it lacked attention-maximizing algorithms and was highly fragmented, so people naturally stopped using it and self-selected into communities with distinct cultures that limited continuous exposure to polarizing content.

Smaller, separate online communities could reduce harmful social sorting because local, self-contained groups recreate social 'glue' with clearer norms and moderation, letting people choose or exit spaces instead of being forced into one polarizing public square.

When social glue breaks down, democratic coexistence weakens because perceiving neighbors or political opponents as morally evil erodes the mutual trust and willingness to cooperate that sustain democratic institutions.

Online polarization compresses many personal traits into bipolar identities because platforms bundle lifestyle markers, media tastes, and beliefs into cohesive 'teams', turning complex differences into all-or-nothing cultural packages that make opponents seem uniformly wrong or immoral.

Engagement-driven algorithms amplify anger and extreme disagreement because platforms optimize for time-on-site and sharing, and angry content provokes more attention and reshares, so the system preferentially surfaces it to maximize engagement.

People are more likely to believe negative claims about out-groups and dismiss the same about in-groups because the brain assigns moral weight based on perceived team membership, biasing credibility toward opponents and excusing allies.

On social platforms, disagreement becomes a marker of identity because lacking local social ties turns the disagreement itself into the salient cue the brain uses to categorize people, which converts isolated differences into lasting team labels.