Social media has made politics more accessible to people who don’t watch the news 24/7. A study from Pew Research Center showed that over 86% of people get their information from their smartphones.

People should not get their information from social media.

Content creators who are not experts pretend to be experts on anything and everything. Most of these people show bias so that they can get the viewer to watch more of their content. Content creators use comedy to connect to their audience. If someone can get the viewer to laugh, then they are more likely to watch the content again. An example of one of these jokes is, “Biden couldn’t work this puzzle out. (Viewer sees a very easy puzzle pop up on their screen). That’s how dumb he is.” 

A huge factor in online misinformation is TikTok. Some countries have TiKTok restrictions for children under 14. America is not one of those countries, so TikTok videos can influence children’s minds and divide the U.S. even further. According to healthychildren.org, kids and teens are influenced by social media. An article by Circle said that nearly half of teens were engaging in social media. The same article said that 45% of teens participate in politics. 

Russia and China have campaigns to divide the United states. Russia’s favorite apps are Twitter and Facebook and China’s favorite app is TikTok. These countries do not care which political side they take. They are mostly bots that do the work to divide the United States. Russia has been dividing other countries for a couple hundred years. War can have effects like less food for people. This tends to make people unhappy and leads a country to division. The same warfare is happening to the U.S. in modern times. The U.S. is influential. People look to the U.S. to see what to vote for because it’s a powerful country and by voting the way of the U.S, the country may have more success and become more powerful. 

Although there are unbiased people on the Internet, few are out there and even fewer choose to not insert their opinion. 

There is a way to avoid a political echo chamber, and that is to challenge biases. Talk person-to-person. The conversation must be rational. The ideal is to find common ground with the other person. There are democrats who are pro-life and there are republicans who believe in affordable health care. Everyone has a different opinion and can find common ground with other humans.