Our magical, disastrous world of bubbles

By Stephen Reeves

Bubbles are a big hit at my house. With 6-, 4-, and 2-year-olds, we keep a bottle of bubbles close at hand. We have all sorts of bubble wands, a bubble gun and a battery-operated handheld bubble machine that can churn out bubbles by the hundreds. 

Stephen holding his youngest son, Landry, up to pop a bubble.

Not only do my kids love making, chasing and popping bubbles, but our dog, Lily, will always join the fun. An English Pointer who is a totally untrained but natural bird dog, she’ll often freeze on point for just a second before crashing through a bubble with her snout. It’s a big day when we roll up to our favorite park and see the “Bubble Man” happens to be there. He has a concoction and bubble-making ropes on sticks capable of producing enormous, magical bubbles big enough to engulf multiple kids.  

I’ve been thinking a lot about bubbles the past two weeks. On Monday, May 3, the New York Times released this fascinating tool that enables you to determine if you live in a political bubble. I highly encourage you to click the link, enter your address and find out about your own neighborhood. Then take a look at the neighborhoods of your family and friends. Through analyzing registration and voting data, they have determined one in three Americans are almost completely geographically isolated from people who support the opposing political party. 

You can also play this game where you’re dropped into a neighborhood via Google maps Street View and try to guess whether the folks there voted for Trump or Biden. 

I’m happy to report my neighborhood is not quite a bubble, but the political parties in my area are not exactly evenly split. Sixty-two percent of the 1,000 neighbors closest to our house in diverse suburban Atlanta are Democrats. When we move to Texas, it will be exactly opposite; 62 percent of our neighbors will be Republicans. 

I first heard of this type of geo-political segregation, or Balkanization, in a book called The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart by Bill Bishop a former writer for the Austin American-Statesman. Published in 2008, the book compares politically competitive counties in the 1974 election to 2008. I’m confident the trends he identified have continued, if not accelerated. 

Our neighborhoods are not the only places where we frequently find ourselves in bubbles. Our churches often are homogenous along racial, ideological and political lines. Working in advocacy for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, I know of many churches that are politically mixed. I’m aware of this because it is a remarkable exception to the rule, and it makes the work of public witness both fraught and yet potentially powerful when folks can agree to work together. 

We also often consume news media in ideological bubbles. This is perhaps most true in cable news channels. I rarely watch, but I’m confident that I can predict the political slant of commentary of FOX News or MSNBC. I’m also certain they will both stoke fear and anger of “the other side.”  It’s not just opinions. I’m afraid our bubbles are now so strong that even verifiable facts that contradict our understanding of the world cannot pierce the walls.

The biggest bubble of all might be social media. We have the ability to self-select who we hear, be it friends, family, political parties, news media or brands. Then, if we don’t like what we get, we can unfriend, unfollow or hide posts and push them right back out of our bubble. The entire business model of social media companies is based upon how long they can keep us staring at our screens. The longer we do so, the more ads they can show us and the more revenue they can generate from advertisers. 

They keep us hooked by showing us what we want to see. As The Big Sort showed, and most of us now know intuitively, our bubbles are bad for the health of our politics and our nation. Maximizing shareholder value is a different motivator than the health of our democracy. If you want to be terrified by just how powerful and dangerous our social media bubbles can be, I recommend watching The Social Dilemma, a documentary on Netflix.

I recently had a realization when I saw a friend whom I respect post something I found fundamentally wrong. I first thought to myself, “How can we see the world so differently?” I then realized we’re not being shown the same world at all. 

Our bubbles are magical. They can make us think we’re always right! They’re constantly confirming our biases. They keep the same unchallenged ideas bouncing around folks who share convictions in common. 

Our bubbles just as easily, and more dangerously, keep ideas out—so much so that when the stray contradicting idea pierces your bubble, you might think that person is absolutely crazy or perhaps an idiot. Lies and conspiracies that confirm our biases grow stronger bouncing around inside our bubbles. 

Of course, there are good reasons for our bubbles. We want to be around people who share our values. We want to feel comfortable and not feel the need to suppress or hide our convictions. We don’t want to needlessly increase our stress levels with conflict. But I fear in our freedom to move, select churches, and decide who and what we hear and see, we’ve created an environment that is now hyper-individualistic and anti-community. The real danger is when we decide those outside our bubbles are not “real” Americans or “real” Christians, or we ultimately dehumanization the other. Our bubbles just might be leading us to a disaster strong enough to threaten the fabric of our nation. Perhaps they already have.

I wish I could offer a solution to our polarizing bubbles, but I don’t have one. I believe it would be a victory to give our bubbles just a little less power. We can do so by practicing humility. Take a moment to recognize, as Paul said in 1 Corinthians, that we see through a glass (bubble) darkly. We don’t have all the answers and our bubbles cloud and obstruct our vision. 

Consider venturing outside your bubble. Intentionally seek out voices from different perspectives and lived experiences. Try not to remove dissenting voices from your social media feed. Even better yet, pay attention to ideas and voices from outside your bubble. Visit new places and engage in an actual live conversation with someone with whom you know you’re likely to disagree. 

Be a bubble popper—don’t let assumptions about who you should be guide who you really are. 

Popping our bubbles doesn’t mean we alter our convictions. The goal is not necessarily to change our minds, but perhaps to see a new perspective, gain a little empathy and hold things a bit lighter. Our bubbles just might be filled with toxic self-righteousness that needs to escape. 

Stephen Reeves is executive director of Fellowship Southwest.