Ex-President Obama on Monday decried the influence of money in politics and the polarization he blamed on social media and the explosive growth of cable TV.

“It’s harder and harder to find common ground because of money in politics, special interests dominate the debates in Washington in ways which don’t match up with the road a majority of Americans feel,” Obama said during a discussion with high school and college students at the University of Chicago, his first public speech since leaving office.

The president had vowed to steer clear of current political debates and not get into a spitting match with President Trump.

Instead, Obama spoke in general about the state of the country as he sees it.

“One thing I’m absolutely convinced of is that, yes we can confront a whole range of challenges from economic inequality and lack of opportunity to a criminal justice system that too often is skewed in ways which are unproductive, climate change to issues related to violence,” he said.

“All those problems are serious, they’re daunting but they’re not insoluble.”

He said social media and the growth of cable TV and talk radio had led to a coarsening of political debate because, in many cases, people only seek out information that reinforces their own beliefs.

“Because of changes in the media, we now have a situation in which everybody’s listening to people who already agree with them and are further and further reinforcing their own realities to the neglect of a common reality that allows us to have a healthy debate and then try to find common ground and actually move solutions forward,” he said.

“If you’re liberal, then you’re on MSNBC and conservative, you’re on Fox News. You’re reading the Wall Street Journal or you’re reading the New York Times or whatever your choices are. Or maybe you’re just looking at cat videos, which is fine,” he quipped.

He laughed when he recalled his statement in 2004 that there were no red states or blue states — just the United States of America.

“That was aspirational,” he said as the crowd laughed.

He also said that the intense polarization among Americans has led many to become cynical and opt out of the political process.

“People are not involved and they give up. As a consequence we have some of the lowest voting rates of any democracy and low participation rates that translate into a further gap between who’s governing us and what we believe,” he said.

Young people, he said, have to become involved because they are the only ones who can change things.

“The only folks who are going to be able to solve that problem are going to be young people, the next generation. And I have been encouraged everywhere I go in the United States, but also everywhere around the world, to see how sharp and astute and tolerant and thoughtful and entrepreneurial our young people are. A lot more sophisticated than I was at their age,” Obama said.