Former President Barack Obama on Monday partly blamed the nation's splintered politics on a media structure that lets people only listen to or read media outlets they agree with, which prevents them from hearing the other side.

"Because of changes in the media, we now have a situation in which everybody is listening to people who already agree with them, and are further and further reinforcing their own realities to the neglect of the common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate, and then try to find common ground and actually move solutions forward," Obama said in his first set of remarks since he left the White House in January.

Obama said other problems include the gerrymandering, money in politics and the control over the government by special interests.

He also seemed to acknowledge that he did less to bring people together than he had hoped.

"When I said in 2004 that there were no red states or blue states, there are the United States of America, that was an aspirational comment," he said.