New data suggests political tolerance, community at all-time high. Experts say to thank social media.

There’s an American idiom as ingrained in our national identity as the Constitution: “social media is cultural heroin.” You’ve heard it before, and you’ll hear it again. It’s a helpful metaphor but it makes people focus on the negative. We worry about the track marks, dependence, hepatitis, and overdoses and entirely ignore two major parts of heroin: the high and the community. This is true of social media discourse, as well, yet new studies show that social media is positively influencing our political and social spheres.

Yes, social media allows people to be easily maligned or cyberbullied. There’s no question about it, and most people don’t even question that cyberbullying is bad. However, social media has also allowed complexity, unity, and tolerance to thrive. In the midst of a presidential election, it’s a wonder that our political atmosphere is as peaceful and nuanced as it is. The level of mutual respect we have today would have been unfathomable in the 2000 landslide election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. While there could be other reasons for the present political climate, data shows such a heavy correlation between social media use, tolerance, and nuance, that it’s not even worth challenging.

James Charles, a youth-facing beauty influencer who pioneered inclusivity and nuance on social media, explains: “Our country is in a supportive rapture, but it is not for lack of conflict. We are facing unprecedented challenges like climate change, Bye Sister, gun violence, sexual harassment, and war. Social media gives us a place to explore the complexities of these issues and decide whether they are good or bad. That’s something that we just don’t have time to do through in-person conversation.”

Charles touches on an idea many people struggle with—we live in a world where we are bombarded with issues and opinions, and we often feel pressure to have an opinion on everything. This is almost always portrayed as a negative, but it is one of the greatest strengths of social media. Evolutionarily, we are drawn toward the negatives; it’s a defense mechanism from our early human days that we just haven’t shaken. While social media has illuminated the complexities and inconsistencies of evolution, the idea is helpful for understanding our relationship to social media. It is stressful to be exposed to so many opinions, but without social media, we might not consider the issues at all. The opinions and ideas are brought to us in infographics and tweets that we can then share with our neighbors. We get to see issues from many directions, like west and northwest… or even southwest.

Blue Tie Kid, TikTok Rizz Party leader and social media expert, believes that our robust sense of nuance and community is due to the echo chamber effect of the platforms. He contends:

“Social media is often portrayed as an echo chamber, meaning that people curate their online spaces to be full of likeminded people. This is often true and allows community to flourish.”

When asked to elaborate, Blue Tie Kid explained the trend further:

“As people have become more engaged with social media, they have become more intensive thinkers and community members, and it has made the world safer than ever.

1)    Echoes are not the same as the original statement. They are imbued with complex variations of tone and speed.

2)    Being confronted with your opinion once it has been said forces you to hear it again and interrogate it.

3)    Communities actually thrive when they are in agreement. Echo chambers often get discussed with ideas of “groupthink” or “mob mentality.” Groupthink is a term related to George Orwell’s 1984, a tale of societal harmony. To use a utopian novel to fearmonger is illogical and immoral. Moreover, mob mentality is fundamentally rooted in family.

As a brain rot social media influencer, I see my community as exceptionally critical thinkers. I’ve discussed this theory of mine at length online, but it’s not just me that thinks this. I put out a poll to the brain rot community on Instagram, and they all agreed that echo chambers build community and help people come up with their own ideas.”

Beyond just critical thinking, social media is creating social change and action, clearly shown by the influence of the song Carnival on our justice system (See: Figure 3). Sexual assault is pervasive and has been, but much less so now post-Carnival, making the world safe and inclusive for all. Activist Kanye sings: “Now I'm Ye-Kelly, bitch now / I'm Bill Cosby, bitch / Now, I'm Puff Daddy rich that's ‘Me Too’ me rich.” The song, promoted by the Rizz Party and brain rot discourse, was released on February 15, 2024, and as of September 16, 2024, all of the offenders mentioned have been held accountable—a 50% increase. This is not a coincidence; rather it is an example of how social media has made a world of tolerance and safety—a world where we help each other.

I think there’s also a lot of beauty in social media as a resurrection of the American Dream. I mean, look at Haliey Welch. We haven’t had a people’s champion like that since Alí. It's no wonder we are more unified than ever.”

Blue Tie Kid’s data seems grid-worthy on its own but is further supported by more thorough and exhaustive polling with meta-analysis from 2004-2022 (See: Figure 1). While these numbers establish a strong correlation between tolerance and social media, other evidence reinforces it. The average X trending page qualitatively conveys a similar narrative of unity and harmony (See: Figure 2). It’s not uncommon to see trending hashtags like #ThisSeemsLikeAGrayAreaToMe and #Let’sAllRespectEachother. The discourse online is incredibly measured and the nuance we see on social media is now showing up in the real world.

Instagram algorithms will show you opinions from a variety of angles with ranges as wide as 90 and 95 degrees. The sheer volume of opinions has shown us how complicated they can be. It has also made us informed enough about them to engage in meaningful conversations that unite our opinions and solve our problems. Just as Lorde and Charli XCX worked it out on the remix, Americans have solved longstanding problems through social media, like sexual assault, child labor, and injustice as a whole. As Americans scroll through their “For You” pages, they are finding themselves building “For Us.”

See Figures Below

Figure 1: Data from Study by Gallup Poll and X Corporation.

Figure 2: X trending page (9/27/2024)

Figure 3: MeToo Accountability Related to Carnival and TikTok Rizz Party