Joey is currently staying with her parents over the weekend and has gotten into a heated political debate with her parents over the upcoming election and social crisis impacting the state of her country. She decides to post about it on her feed. To her relief, she receives a wave of support from her friends and colleagues, asserting that ‘boomers’ are living in their own world and have no regard for the future generations to come. Joey decides to conduct an investigation and logs into her father’s computer to inspect his social media profile.  

 Joey is shocked to find a plethora of rather right-wing news and information streaming through her father’s social media feed as she enters the site. Her father’s newsfeed differs significantly to her own. Joey believes the collection of personalized information her father is reading on a daily basis is only serving to reinforce his own beliefs.

Upon some self-reflection, Joey comes to the conclusion that her father is not the only person who has fallen victim to the echo chamber of social media, she too is living in a filter bubble, insulated by her own personal eco-system of information. 

Joey understands that in order for her and father to have meaningful debates, they need to stop being so stuck in their own filter bubbles. She finds a few tools she can use to help both her and her father look at both right and left perspectives on political issues such as “Read Across the Aisle”, an app that seeks to disrupt the polarization of people’s filter bubbles by exposing them to news they wouldn’t otherwise see in their regular newsfeeds.

Every time we click, watch, or even share a comment, social media and search engines collect our information, which generates personalized advertisements. In this sense, our phones and computers are like a one-way mirror into our very minds.