My, how times have changed. In the very small amount of time between the end of Bush-Republicanism through the fast-approaching end of Obama’s tenure, the country has overwhelmingly become more liberal. In fact, so rapidly has this happened that few of us who watched the Bush-Obama transition could have dreamed of it. Some of the basic social opinions of many Americans have significantly shifted, and it appears Liberals may have a real chance of permanently winning the ‘culture war’. Other things in society have also changed, but there are signs these other changes may threaten the tremendous progress that has been made, and it’s entirely our fault.

In late 2007, the Democratic primary to replace George W. Bush was starting up and the very first iPhone was being released. I was a young, liberal college student who had not yet learned the dangers of shopping sprees on a credit card. An iPod AND a phone? With a touch screen?!! I absolutely fawned at the possibilities. My concept of it was simplistic in retrospect: how cool would it be to have your phone and iPod in one device?

I bought it the very second I could find one, paying a disgraceful amount on eBay since the phone was virtually impossible to get your hands on in retail. I was the first person I knew to get one. In fact, most people thought it seemed like a waste of money. Why buy a phone and an iPod when you already had both in your backpack? The setup was cumbersome, the idea of a $30/mo data plan was outrageous, and the mere fact that I was carying around a peice of technology that cost more than a laptop was insane. But oh, was it worth it once I had it in my hands.

At the same time as my iPhone purchase, I was working at a hipster coffee shop full of young, intellegent, politically-minded people in the midst of a contentious primary battle. At the time, this was a prime example of an echo-chamber. You can imagine there are very few conservative Republicans spending their time discussing politics in a hipster coffee joint. Still, we had our differences. Some of us were neo-liberals who bordered on socialist and some of us were left-of-center moderate Democrats. Most fell somewhere between. We would argue over many of the same things Liberals still argue about: the role of government, the ideology of various politicians, the various types of oppression existing in society and the best way to fix it, and who we supported in the primaries. We were, however, much more united by many commonalities: the Iraq war, George W. Bush, Gay rights, and economic equality to name a few. More than anything was the knowledge that we were the next generation of Liberals who must fight for a better country.

Several days after I purchased my iPhone, I sat at a booth in a small diner with a friend. We were musing about whatever types of inane political things young college people muse about in diners, when he threw out a question neither of us knew the answer to. That’s when it hit me. I can search the Internet while sitting in a diner.

That’s where all this began. Young people were living in the beginning of both the new liberal era as well as a new technological era. With the growing ability to use the Internet anywhere came a novel new way of communicating and discussing politics: people could share information and ideas at a staggering pace. No more did one have to wait until they had access to a newspaper or computer to read the news. Their AOL instant messenger accounts were replaced with group texts and Instagram feeds. They no longer needed to join liberal echo-chambers in coffee shops; they had access to all kinds of echo-chambers at their fingertips that they could take with them wherever they went.

At first, with the beginning of the Internet, the idea of limitless possibilities to share and receive information, even from people you’d never met, seemed like such a positive thing. It was a way to further dialogues and see new and interesting perspectives, and no doubt served as a great advancement for the furthering and consolidation of young progressive ideals. A young Democrat in a deep red state didn’t have to feel alone, and many young people were able to further their discussions and debates across all geographical lines.

Something funny happened to us once the Internet transitioned to being with us constantly, though. The negative side of this great new ability crept into our lives and took control without any of us noticing. It is becoming more apperant with the years: growing amounts of people are fast becoming walking, talking echo chambers everywhere they go. Human nature is such that we surround ourselves with things we like or agree with and this propensity for confirmation bias has existed long before technological advances. With the invention of smart phones, however, people began to possess a greater ability to inundate themselves with only things they want to hear, without nearly as many situations that required them to hear things they do not want to hear.

The definition of an echo chamber full of confirmation bias is that it is a group environment where no discourse exists. It serves further to extreme each member. Members become absolutely certain about issues they once may have been unsure of or even disagreed with. I agree with multiple principles of this ideology therefore I must confirm this support by also supporting everything else in that ideology. It is common for people in echo chambers to completely abandon things they once believed to further conform to a new idea or refuse to acknowledge the similarities with others who do not share the rest of their ideas. It is even more common for them to reject or even balk at any factual evidence that is contrary to their beliefs and begin to simply attack the messenger. It is human nature if we let it be: it’s much easier to believe things that support our opinions than accept things that don’t. Especially if we constantly avoid listening to them.

One of the best examples of an echo chamber is extreme, and doesn’t actually have its roots in technology. Starting in the 80’s, and ramping up significantly in the 90’s, was the Republican Party’s rather brilliant induction of the religious right. These particular voters, believe it or not, were often Democrats in the previous decades. But the Republican Party saw a distinct opportunity to gain supporters because of the religious beliefs and moral opinions of this group. Even though the basic principles of conservatism rely on a small government that does not place undue burden on freedom, they became the party of anti-homosexuality, anti-abortion, and basically anti-sin. Using conservative talking points, radio, and publications they created plenty of incentive for the religious-right to join them based off what they already believed on moral issues. Objective logic would stand to reason that a Religious person could be both against Gay Marriage but also oppose other forms of the GOP platform such as tax cuts for the wealthy. That may even have been common in the beginning, but eventual echo-chambers ensured that type of objectivity died. Because of the focus on these moral issues as the main talking point, Republicans were able to link the religious issues with otherwise unrelated topics such as environmentalism, tax policies, and military power as a form of a purity test without even trying. For many extreme supporters, extrapolation began to occur. The sinning, Godless liberals believed in protecting the environment, therefore anyone who believed the same were agreeing with the same people who support homosexuality and abortion. In this way, unrelated GOP issues became part of the larger philosophy and intricately tied to the moral beliefs of their religion. Quickly, the religious right embraced these non-related ideas just as strongly to further conform to the purity of the overall movement. This set the ball in motion for those voters to create their own echo chambers. Pastors and religious leaders began treating political issues as religious ones, quickly turning churches into forms of political communities. Religion and politics became so intertwined as to be nearly inseparable. As the effects of the echo-chambers advanced, the religious right created situations that ensured they never had to question any of these beliefs: anyone who disagrees with this overall philosophy or even a part of it is vilified as literally the messengers of evil and advancing the Devil’s sinful behavior. There became no room for discourse or differences of political thought.

This may seem antiquated or extreme, but it is the same direction I fear modern liberals are taking. Talking with other people in our like-minded circles regarding political and philosophical views has become somewhat taboo, even disliked. As the level of echo-chamber influence we have created for ourselves with the rise of technology becomes increasingly sheltering, liberals become more prone to an argumentative nature rather than a discussionary one. We become so used to only being surrounded by what we agree with, that the idea of being confronted with opposing views, even from people we have a lot in common with, becomes a situation we are not equipped to handle. I don’t agree with several things this person think so, therefore I don’t like ANYTHING they say. And no wonder this is the case: why bother reasonably disagreeing with someone when you can simply pull out your phone and find people that agree with you. Plus, any contentious arguments can simply be had amongst total strangers who have no personal impact on our lives.

We are losing a very important aspect of the human condition: discussing opposing opinions with people you know and respect. We no longer place ourselves in situations that require us to process our opinions internally, instead we just seek to continuously confirm them without challenge.

The personal impact people have on you plays an important role in shaping who you are. The arguments with people you know personally, respect, and regard as friends are the key success in bridging divides and psychologically learning to, if not outright accept, at least understand other points of view. With understanding comes a reduction of animosity and the forming of bonds between opposing views to find common ground out of respect for the person. Take gay marriage: it was a famous portion of the Hollywood movie ‘Milk’, inspired by the first gay elected official in the country, that people’s opinions about homosexuals change if they know just ONE gay person personally. This shows the importance of personal connections with different people of other opinions, but with our increasing ability to create our own reality, we stop being subjected to differences among people. Discord and animosity at ‘the others’ of the world begins to breed, because we increasingly don’t regularly interact with anyone who is not like us. Our ability to dismiss other opinions grows because the people we are hearing opposing views from are quickly only online discussions with people who we don’t even know. A great example is the multitudes of fraud allegations this primary season: “I don’t know a single person who’s voting for this candidate, so them winning has no other explanation than fraud.” Never do we consider that we do not know any of these people because we have created a life for ourselves that doesn’t include any of them. Instead, through our echo chambers of confirmation bias, we seek out any opinion or theory that further confirms our belief that our opinions are the most popular ones and therefore the only reason they are losing is because of fraud.

I miss those days in that coffee shop with my iPhone. Not out of some relic of nostalgia, but because of my hope that we would be the generation that finally made a difference. It seemed as if everyone in my generation had so much in common, and it would all one day culminate into a more liberal America where we could fight together for a common good.

This is all to say that we are not far from allowing ourselves to become the parallel to the religious right. As we dissect liberals into different groups based on purity tests made up of a requirement to agree with us on specific key issues, we begin the path to bitterly fight and demonize each other until all forms of dissent are shut entirely out of our lives. This person isn’t liberal enough because they disagree with me on several issues. These people are unrealistic and totally outside of reality because they do not agree with me on this. Quickly fading is the understanding that we are all on the same side and in its decline rises the idea that we are enemies.

I look around now during another very contentious primary and I see that childish dream I once had in college disappearing. No longer are liberals arguing over various disagreements while remaining united in a common cause. No longer are we forced to hear anything we disagree with, even from those we are the most similar to. We have allowed ourselves, all across the country and political spectrum, to divide ourselves into categories and separate groups who refuse to communicate or bridge gaps between each other. And we love it. Our human nature naturally seeks to reassure ourselves that our sincerely held beliefs are just and correct. But this can be taken to an extreme. By seeking out nothing but confirming information and opinions, we no longer interact in physical political debates or have to rationalize and explain our opinions (which almost by definition will have some flaw or hole we ignore). We can have group discussions held in our pockets, but with the distinct difference of deciding who among us should be a part of it. We join Reddit communities who swirl into demagoguery while distancing ourselves from the people and ideas that we disagree with, even slightly. We are not forced to interact with people with different views because we now possess the ability to choose from a vast array of information channels which exclusively fit our desired opinions.

We arguably live in a vastly more liberal society than when I bought that iPhone in the last contentious primary. My hopes and dreams of a united young set of liberals began to come to fruition. We saw such societal improvement in such a quick amount of time. And it was all because we had not lost sight of the fact that, regardless of our differences, we were all in this together.

If we allow a continued drift between us, mocking each other and refusing to unite for common causes, screaming ill-sourced opinions that don’t have any factual basis, we will lead to our own downfall. If young liberals can’t find a way to avoid the mental prison of echo chambers and confirmation bias to work with each other, how will the larger part of our country ever be able to?

Smart phones were one of the most revolutionary and important inventions in decades. Let’s not allow it to be the revolutionary product that kills the revolutionary movement.