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Everyone knows that social media make us more divided. Online, able to choose which views we encounter, we separate into tribes and become more extreme. Democrats know it. Republicans know it. Independents know it. It is a rare point of agreement in a nation that barely seems to agree on anything.
But is it true? The answer is not so simple. Faced with online vitriol that feels as though it is getting worse all the time, we look for someone to blame and settle, conveniently, on the people we already dislike: social media barons. There is, of course, plenty of reason to criticize Silicon Valley’s monopolists. But their problems are not completely of their own making. Social media are bad in large part because their users make them that way.