More friends, more division – https://phys.org/news/2025-10-friends-division-social-circles-fuel.html
Interesting study saying that polarization in societies has risen since 2008 as people on average have more friends. I think this is true, as 10 years ago I had much more mildly held political opinions, and so did many of the friends I debate with here.
My theories:
Rise of the Influencers: People have more “friends” on average if you just look at the people they follow online. But social media has “influencers” who have thousands of friends, skewing numbers upwards. Influencers post content to get likes, and what often gets the most likes is inflammatory material taken out of context and exaggerated.
Plus you have gigantic echo chambers like Reddit for the left, and X for the right. I actually had to cancel my X account for my own mental health around a year ago. Facebook may actually be somewhat helpful as I tend to see both right and left wing opinions here.
What’s good for social media corporations is bad for society. Class action lawsuits are the way to counter this if it could be proved.