In 'Superbloom' by IT futurist and technology critic Nicholas Carr, the spread of social media is closely linked to division and conflict. The author says social media is optimised less to strengthen bonds among people than to maximise differences.

To make the case, the author cites many research findings. One is a 1976 study by sociologist Ebbe Ebbesen and two fellow scholars at the University of California, San Diego, involving a large apartment complex in Irvine, south of Los Angeles. The study focused on how physical distance affects how people perceive one another. The result was that the closer people live, the more likely they are to hate each other.

"Among close neighbours, being enemies was more common than being friends. The reason neighbours often become friends is simple. They run into each other often. They have frequent chances to meet and exchange small talk. Such easy conversations create familiarity, familiarity produces common empathy, and empathy in turn brings attachment. But the reason neighbours become enemies, the researchers found, was very different."

"It was because of 'environmental degradation'. The closer you live to someone else, the more often you are exposed to that person’s habits and opinions. What if you do not like those habits or opinions? For example, what if the person puts out the rubbish bin to match the garbage truck’s schedule but does not bring it back in on time, or leaves the dog’s droppings, or puts up a sign supporting a political candidate you dislike? You would probably come to hate the person because you think they lower the quality of your surroundings. And because the person lives nearby, their annoying habits and opinions will always catch your eye, deepening your anger and aversion."

Applied to social media, the findings take on even greater meaning.

"The research above may suggest more than ever. It helps explain why the effects of social media are so different from what we expected, and why the technology of connection has brought more conflict than harmony. Because we are all neighbours in virtual space, we can always look into each other’s lives and interfere."

"Whether acquaintances or strangers, we are constantly exposed to far more people’s habits and opinions than ever before. We can peer, almost at a microscopic level, into what other people say and do. In other words, smartphone screens have turned all of us into voyeurs, leaving no end of reasons to be offended. Virtual reality has no rubbish bins or dog droppings, but degradation of one’s surroundings can still happen in any number of ways."

"Our close friends, co-workers and lovers are people we get along with and like, and they are also the people we know best. Our intuition leads us to believe that having a lot of information about someone is related to liking that person. But intuition is biased. If we judge that we do not like our neighbour, for example the one who does not clean up dog droppings, we begin to avoid that person and gather less information about them. If we sort our relationships that way, we end up surrounded by a small, atypical group of people we like a lot and know a lot about. Our personal experience distorts our understanding."

The author also cites findings from a study by a team of social psychologists in Boston led by Harvard University professor Michael Norton in 2007. It examined what really happens when people receive more information about another person.

"Researchers first conducted a survey to establish a baseline for people’s attitudes. As expected, they found most people believed they would like someone more as they learned more about that person. They then tested whether that belief was correct. The result was surprising. As the number of personality traits disclosed to participants increased, their liking for the described person declined. As information increased, liking consistently fell."

"With personal information circulating on the internet, people are finding evidence of both common ground with others and countless differences. They see similarities, and they also see differences. Over time, as Norton’s research showed, they begin to put more weight on differences. It is hard to imagine a communication mechanism better prepared to trigger and spread a waterfall of differences than social media."

"Information circulating through social networks can act as an attractant. But more often it acts as a repellent. Grimly, it was a fact that familiarity breeds contempt. It also breeds envy and rivalry. Social media’s encouragement of self-disclosure creates more opportunities and stronger reasons to envy and resent what others possess or represent, just as it triggers our instinct to dislike those who are different from us."

The book says that as the scale of connections grows, differences among people become more prominent, raising the likelihood that relationships will spiral into crisis. With inter-group conflict over differences appearing to grow rather than subside, it may also be a message worth noting for the political world, which is active in spreading messages through social media.

"No matter how tangible and welcome many benefits of social media may feel, we must not overlook how profoundly digital technology is changing society’s role. Looking at the many findings psychologists and sociologists have made about the troubling nature of human relationships — environmental degradation, waterfalls of differences, the slow and loose unfolding of relationships, and conflicts between exposure and privacy — it becomes clear how ill-suited the human mind is to this new media environment."

"As connections doubled and messages spread, human relationships went into crisis. Distrust grew and strong aversion accumulated. That is the tragedy of communication. When there is too much, a reversal occurs. The very social and personal capacities that communication was expected to foster begin instead to deteriorate. In economic terms, communication shows diminishing returns and eventually turns into negative returns. Communication overturns itself."