Americans, who do you think is dividing us, pitting us against each other and how do we stop them?

Honestly, it feels like everyone has a finger in the pie these days. From where I’m sitting, the constant 24/7 outrage machine on social media is the biggest culprit. It’s profitable for them to keep us angry and glued to our screens, so they serve up whatever content makes our blood boil the most. We’re being fed these extreme caricatures of "the other side" until we stop seeing our neighbors as actual people and start seeing them as symbols of everything we hate. It's exhausting, and it’s clearly by design to keep engagement high.

Stopping it is the hard part, but I think it starts with us actually stepping offline. I’ve found that when I talk to people in person—at the park, the grocery store, or even just over the fence—the tension just isn't there like it is online. We have to stop letting algorithms dictate our reality. If we started prioritizing local connections and face-to-face conversations over the doom-scrolling, a lot of that artificial hostility would just lose its power. It’s about choosing curiosity over judgment, which sounds simple, but it’s a radical act these days.