The Negative Effects Of A Filter Bubble

Social media has opened up countless possibilities for society. It has had several positive benefits such as allowing humans to interact with each other whether it be when they’re in the same city or even across the world from each other. Today’s culture heavily relies on this phenomenon called social media and although it has brought so many positive benefits it also has it’s negative ones. Social media has heavily influenced people's lives therefore causing young adults to be exposed to filtered content that is personalized and biased which creates a filter bubble that affects people’s everyday lives and their judgement. Using social media creates a filter bubble only adding reinforcement to the user’s beliefs setting them apart from reality …show more content…
The dictionary definition of a filter bubble is the intellectual isolation that occurs when websites assume the information a user would want to see based on a users former click behavior, browsing history, search history, and location. Since all of the information in a users timeline is based solely on searches that are related to only self interests, it can cause only biased posts to be presented. People can view this as a good thing in the way that only self interests are being presented, but if all information that is present is biased it can cause the user to see less conflicting point of views leading to an isolated mentality. Isolation between a person’s point of view and any opposing views is a problem and can be viewed as pure ignorance. Activist and author of Filter Bubbles , Eli Pariser describes filter bubbles as “personal ecosystems of information”. Pariser identifies filter bubbles to be present in every aspect of a person's life. Filter bubbles aren’t always brought upon from search engines such as google or social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, it is also present in people’s social lives. Eli Pariser goes on to say how filter bubbles are present in people's everyday lives, he gives an example of people that live in gated communities thinking that luxurious cars and houses is the reality because of how filtered their life is. This may not seem …show more content…
This type of bias is a form of filter bubble that has been surrounding political topics since social media has made its way to be a very popular form of social engagement. One of the biggest controversies surrounding filter bubbles has been during the campaign and election of now president Donald Trump. Throughout 2016 and 2017 the media had been consumed by thousands of posts about the controversial statements he said throughout his presidential campaign, or so everybody thought. The world was blindsided when Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2017. Social media and its take on filtered content presented to their users is a big reason for a lot of people being surprised Trump's triumph over Hillary Clinton. Due to the controversial statements Donald Trump would say throughout his presidential election social media was masked with headlines about how many people disliked now president Trump. These headlines overshadowed Trump supporters and social media users were astonished because all the filtered posts hid the opposite point of view, masking the reality that Trump was ahead all along. Social media has made it relatively easy for people to filter out any views that aren’t the same as theirs, causing people to forget that people indeed do have opposing views and