A teenager scrolls through their social media, which is now riddled with clips of political parties arguing over who is more “right.” This teen, wanting to learn more about the current political situation, seems to keep finding contradictory videos. They want to have their own opinions on what people are talking about, but they were never taught how to research something like this. How is this teen, and the new generation of voters supposed to be a part of the conversation when so many others are simply arguing?
The division of political groups in the US has been becoming increasingly worse in recent decades. According to Gallup, in 2024, 77% of republicans identified as conservatives and 55% of democrats identified as liberals, which are the extreme ends of political ideologies.
These are some of the highest percentages of political polarization ever, and it is starting to show in the media.
“Social media bubbles make it so that people are less open to different views,” said English teacher Peter Kim. “People often only see what’s in their bubble and what they’re fed, and so they’re less willing to, or they’re less flexible to, listen to other people’s views.”
People don’t want to be told that an opinion they have is “wrong” – especially when it relates to politics, so they tend to interact with content that doesn’t differ from their point of view. But this causes them to have a much more shallow understanding of the topic altogether.
When people only interact with opinions similar to theirs, it reinforces the idea that they are “right,” but all this does is lead to the misinformed debate that is taking over social media.
One of the most popular examples of this currently is the series, “Surrounded,” from the YouTube channel Jubilee. These videos are popular for putting one person in a room of about 20 people that strongly disagree with their viewpoint, and they debate controversial political topics such as immigration, abortion, vaccination and much more.
The problem is these videos are camouflaging arguments that are regularly built off of wrong information in a civil debate setting. Clips of these videos have gained a large platform on social media for the recognizable faces they brought on the show, including Charlie Kirk and Dr. Mike who are both big online personalities.
These videos are only one example of the type of media that encourages uncivil political debate. They take a seemingly professional setting and let anyone debate topics that most of them don’t have an informed enough opinion to be debating.
This justifies uncivil and uneducated political debate outside of these longform videos, which only spreads misinformation even faster.
Unlike in the Jubilee videos, there isn’t a fact-checker verifying every fact in fast moving social media posts, so a lot of information, right or wrong, goes unchecked. According to a 2025 study from the Pew Research Center, only 5% of adults said that the spread of false information was not a threat to their country, with an overwhelming 72% saying that it is a major threat.
The spread of misinformation on social media is becoming more prevalent as louder voices are taking over the platform.
The purpose of discussing controversial political topics is not to make it into an argument that each side is trying to win, it is supposed to bring new and important voices into the conversation. The problem has become that the loudest voices are taking over these discussions, instead of the ones people should be hearing.
When people on social media give as many people as possible the chance to contribute their experiences, then more people will be able to have informed opinions on topics that are important toward everyone’s future.