A huge “thank you” to Adam Grant for turning me on to a recent report led by New York University Professor Jay. J. Van Bavel, and students Claire E. Robinson and Kareena S. del Rosario.
For years, I have wondered about the outsized impact of social media on the culture, and how the 80/20 rule might apply to what passes for popular consensus.
I sold my car in January. Since then, I have been commuting by bus and on foot, so I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with people who come from different neighborhoods and often don’t look like me. The overwhelming majority of my encounters are positive.
I read the news and scroll through my feed and sometimes wonder why the world I’m living in doesn’t seem to match what I’m seeing through my screens.
It turns out the outsized impact of the few is even more acute than I feared. In their study, “Inside the funhouse mirror factory: How social media distorts perceptions of norms,” published in the December 2024 issue of ScienceDirect, Van Bavel et. al. report:
“Research on social media has found that, while only three percent of active accounts are toxic, they produce 33 percent of all content. Furthermore, 74 percent of all online conflicts are started in just one percent of communities, and 0.1 percent of users shared 80 percent of fake news.”
I learned two new conditions that arise from this phenomenon: False Polarization and Pluralistic Ignorance.
- False Polarization is the degree to which partisans overestimate the ideological gap between their side and that of their opponents, creating a false perception that attracts media attention.
- Pluralistic Ignorance, (also known as a collective illusion) is a phenomenon in which people mistakenly believe that others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own. In this phenomenon, most people in a group may go along with a view they do not hold because they think, incorrectly, that most other people in the group hold it.
In other words, a small handful of trolls is largely responsible for the mess we’re living in now.
The Van Bavel report mirrors findings from 2018’s “Truth Disrupted,” written by MIT professor Sinan Aral, which focused on how human nature leads to the rapid dissemination of false news. Sadly, the prescriptions offered by Aral six years ago, including a more active role by advertisers, were largely ignored.
“The social media advertising ecosystem depends on the spread of content. The more attention content gets, the more value it creates and the more advertising revenue it earns. So, in a sense, current digital advertising business models incentivize the spread of false news — because, as we’ve seen, misinformation travels farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than accurate news does.”
Through our inaction, those of us driving the attention economy are culpable for the problems facing society today. We have repeatedly rewarded bad behavior.
But I can’t help but wonder whether all my handwringing is unfounded.
There is a real America that resides behind the wall of noise. They are our fellow parents at school, co-workers, neighbors and the folks you see every day at the store or the car wash.
They get up. Go to work (either at the factory, home or office). Pay their taxes. Look after their families and participate in community events. They believe in the Golden Rule and are content to live and let live. They are part of the solution, but few bother to speak to or listen to what they have to say.
These folks are the modern-day Silent Majority. In marketing parlance, they are the underserved.
In our lust for clicks and eyeballs, let’s not forget that we’re here to help people find the products and services they need to live better lives. Let’s also not forget about the people who produce these goods and services and treat them with the dignity and respect all people deserve.
Revival 