Abstract
In the pre-social-media age, individuals interacted with far fewer people. I argue that people have less choice in these interactions. This lack of choice drives exposure to diverse and dissenting opinions. However, post-social-media, individuals interact with far greater numbers of people and have much more choice. This increased choice gives individuals the liberty to ignore dissenting opinions and dwell in their own echo-chamber, a subnetwork within the larger network in which individuals share the same opinion. While some have argued that the design of algorithms favors the creation of echo chambers, the formation of these structures might be individual-driven rather than algorithm driven. The aims of this project are to 1) investigate the role of age in the degree of echo-ness a person tends to encounter and 2) simulate an algorithm that promotes the breakdown of these echo chambers.