Quitting social media for a month causally reduces political polarization

Evidence

Social media seems to offer perverse incentives by rewarding negative engagement. In fact, according to the New York Times, in 2020, internal research from Facebook revealed that posts which users rated as ‘bad for the world’ generated more engagement. This aligns with our finding that negative and divisive content maximized engagement on two of the biggest social media platforms, Facebook and Twitter. I should say that although criticizing or ‘dunking’ on the other side systematically coincided with higher rates of sharing, our study does not provide causal evidence of polarization. But recent randomized trials have revealed causal evidence: asking people to discontinue using social media for a month actually reduces polarization. — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 459

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Social media amplifies rather than causes pre-existing biases in susceptible users; Most people do not actively seek out polarizing content when browsing freely — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof: Why Misinformation Infects…, 465; News consumed via social media correlates with more polarization than direct browsing (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• News consumed via social media correlates with more polarization than direct browsing #corroborates (0.85)
• Strong affective polarization across groups erodes democratic discourse #qualifies (0.70) — Sander van der Linden, Foolproof, 734