> Social media dramatically increased political polarization
No, it didn’t.
Social media emerged at a time when the US was returning to the long-term norm of partisan polarization from an aberrant period where political polarization was less aligned with the divide between the two major parties because it was a long period of overlapping political realignments (pivoting around the New Deal and the Civil Rights.)
It was also during a rise in overall political polarization, but that had also been going on since about the end of the realignment period in the mid-1990s, after a drop over the preceding couple decades from the long high of political-but-not-necessarily-partisan-polarization in the overlapping Civil Rights/Vietnam period, but it can hardly explain a trend that started before it existed.
Well, one thing social media didn't do is eliminate the self-absorption of the US universe. My (anecdotal) empirical observations and speculations about mechanisms that drive polarization have little to do with the US. The patterns we discuss are (alas) quite universal and other cultures are not at all immune to this.
Of-course if we zoom out to longer time scales polarization was rampant and lethal (across most of the world), in ways we thought or hoped we will never see again.
The tragic result of social media as they developed is that instead of helping fix known problems or help build consensus about handling emerging problems, they aggravate them, in ways that we only gradually start figuring out.
No, it didn’t.
Social media emerged at a time when the US was returning to the long-term norm of partisan polarization from an aberrant period where political polarization was less aligned with the divide between the two major parties because it was a long period of overlapping political realignments (pivoting around the New Deal and the Civil Rights.)
It was also during a rise in overall political polarization, but that had also been going on since about the end of the realignment period in the mid-1990s, after a drop over the preceding couple decades from the long high of political-but-not-necessarily-partisan-polarization in the overlapping Civil Rights/Vietnam period, but it can hardly explain a trend that started before it existed.