It’s 2:03 a.m., and instead of being blanketed by eyelids, your pupils reflect the glaring blue light of your phone. When people refer to doomscrolling, they’re usually referring to an addiction to trivial memes or overconsumption hauls. But what if the addiction lies in consuming radical content—without even realizing it is radical? Extremist content is everywhere now, and not only is it easy to fall down the rabbit hole, it’s even harder to crawl back out—all due to polarization and pride. 

Encountering extremist political content is inevitable. Social media platforms are not designed to inform, but to captivate. Their algorithms prioritize engagement over accuracy, emphasizing shocking opinions over those that are accurately representative of real-life demographics. As a result, radical opinions seem more prevalent than they actually are, leading to distorted perceptions of popular opinion.

Yet extremist content is not solely harmful due to the views it promotes—it is also harmful due to the deep division it leaves in its wake. Radical left-wing and extremist right-wing movements alike thrive on polarization, promoting antagonization and an “us versus them” mentality as a central part of their ideologies. Hatred becomes identity. Rifts deepen. Dialogue becomes impossible. Consuming extremist content convinces people that the opposing side seeks to harm them. Of course, zealots with violent intent do, and will always exist. But to generalize an entire side of the political spectrum based on these few individuals is not only wildly inaccurate but also destructive. A lack of willingness to communicate with radicals results in even less dialogue. This will further deepen the divide and create a vicious cycle that rapidly diverges the two sides, and in doing so, further radicalizes people. 

Mental strength doesn’t make anyone immune to the indoctrination of hate-centered tribalism. Humans, even intelligent ones, are wired to chase validation, seek approval, and yearn for belonging. Political labels are a symptom of this natural instinct. Liberal, leftist, democrat, conservative, right-wing, republican. This classification provides us with a sense of belonging. Unfortunately, hate is a powerful unifying force, and political alliances are often unions built on hate. Hate for minorities, religions and sexuality acts as the glue that holds these communities together. 

There’s yet another layer to the negative effects of extremist content. Strong identification with political labels almost always leads to bigotry, ignorance and cultish behavior. Once someone considers themself as a part of a group, it becomes dangerously easy to fall into the “herd mentality,” where people trade individual thought for party validation. Over time, critical thinking is eroded as people blindly emulate the behaviors of those around them, adopting views without feeling a need to question. This is why extremists are so resistant to logic, and why they don’t realize the glaringly obvious faults in their ideologies.

What makes this especially concerning is that you could be an extremist and not realize it. It is difficult to recognize whether you’ve fallen into the herd mentality due to confirmation bias, a psychological concept that explains how humans overemphasize information that supports their views instead of analyzing counterarguments to see if their logic is consistent. Whether or not someone is reasonable and has their own compass, or if they’ve surrendered their reasoning skills to feel a sense of support from their chosen label, may be easily differentiable to an outsider. You might think that someone’s lack of logic is painfully obvious. But you might have unknowingly fallen into the same pattern.

The surprisingly high level of support extremist content receives can also be credited to teenagers dominating the social media demographic. Teenagers, due to their inexperience in life, tend to be more persuadable. In their confusing journey of self-discovery, teenagers seek affirmation. Extremists can’t provide logic or critical thinking. Affirmation, on the other hand, is a whole different story. Take Andrew Tate, for example. His entire platform is centered around affirming men in an incredibly misogynistic version of masculinity. But this masculinity, as he defines it, is presented in a catchy way, allowing his content to spread like wildfire among the male youth. It didn’t matter that he had admitted to cheating on his girlfriend and dismissed it as “exercise.” It didn’t matter that he praised men for having multiple sexual partners while slut-shaming women. All that mattered was that teenage boys felt validated and empowered by his content. To this day, many teenage boys still defend him and his views. 

Framing bias, another psychological phenomenon, describes how emotional responses to a statement can vary greatly depending on how it is worded and presented. This is why problematic yet charismatic leaders such as Andrew Tate, mentioned earlier, can radicalize large masses of people. And so, polarization using hate and the herd mentality, along with biases such as the framing bias, and personal pride-related biases such as the confirmation bias, are the reasons why it is so incredibly difficult to escape indoctrination. 

But does that mean that politics shouldn’t be taught at all, simply because of the risk that political educators may be extremists? There’s no denying how vital political education is for youth. Politics is the system that governs our world. Yet, getting this education from sources such as social media can lead to the loss of critical thinking, which is the opposite of what we should strive for.

The core of the issue lies in the ease of falling into bigotry and ignorance, and the difficulty of escaping said cultish beliefs and indoctrination. Due to how challenging it is to escape extremist rabbit holes, it is of utmost importance that we prevent people from falling into them in the first place. For this purpose, it is vital to promote dialogue between individuals, especially students, with contrasting views. Conversation is a powerful tool that can not only dissuade the expansion of hate-centered political views but can also force individuals to confront their already-adopted harmful ideologies. It’s ironic to think that the solution to issues caused by extremists utilizing free speech is more free speech. But conversation is one of the only means by which we can effectively, civilly, promote critical thinking among the indoctrinated; by compelling them to think logically and come up with proper justifications for their beliefs, we can force them to understand the inconsistencies in their belief systems.