Digitally informed or deformed?
The enormous growth of digital technology during the last decades has enabled some big changes in our communicative and informative environment. Nowadays, this environment largely consists of online platforms and communities, like Google, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These tech giants easily influence our intake of information using algorithms. A term that you are probably familiar with since your algorithm has presented you with this post. An algorithm is a set of rules that makes you get to the desired outcome from a given input. The use of these algorithms by online platforms results in the personalized news and information feeds that we consume every day.
The digital filter bubble is no longer a buzz word
This personalization has created new opportunities for businesses to reach their targets (and for you to find the perfect shoes in just a few clicks), but it has also created little bubbles of information within our online environment. Algorithms isolate you from messages and perspectives you haven’t already expressed an interest in, which results in a filter bubble. The information that you consume only strengthens your existing beliefs, leading to increasingly extreme beliefs. This therefore results in an increasingly polarized society. If platforms only provide us with messages we have already shown our assent with, then how can we ever think out of the box? How can we make decisions for ourselves?
Put yourself out of the box
Social exploration is the answer! Get off the Internet and spend more time getting to know new people. Make those connections as diverse as possible. Expose yourself to a very broad variety of information and ideas. Interact with real people from different cultures in different settings. This exploration can also take place online. Confuse the algorithm. Follow people you normally wouldn’t. Read newspapers or articles you normally wouldn’t. In other words, consciously look up opposite views and ideas. The algorithm will notice this change and reflect it in future personalization. Another thing you can do is browse in incognito mode. It presents you a World Wide Web, without bubbles and filters.
Roman Payne once wrote: “A person does not grow from the ground like a vine or a tree, one is not part of a plot of land. Mankind has legs so it can wander.” Go wander. Go discover. True wisdom and meaningful opinions can only be the result of exploring the world around us.
