I think this hits the nail right on the head, but I think there is more... The point at which theoretical political dogma transition from a recreational debate

I think this hits the nail right on the head, but I think there is more... The point at which theoretical political dogma transition from a recreational debate into a something an intelligent person might feel uncomfortably obligated to place more thought into, is when there are real personal impacts on them. Everyone can talk about universal healthcare as an intellectual concept, but it's not until they finally have the experience in a socialized hospital that they might take the time to wonder about the real merits of a single-payer system (this is a random example - don't get hung up on it). This problem is then amplified by two recent phenomena... 1. The drastic decrease in age of the average political participant. With Reddit as an example, the average age of Reddit users has dropped nearly 1 year for every year over the last ten years. Presumably, Twitter has seen the same demographic shift. This means these politically active users have less education to fall back on, and approach these subjects with more emotion. That leads to more insults and less constructive arguments, and a general intolerance of opposition. 2. International participation. There is a drastic increase in US social media platforms from non-US participants. For those people, the debates are pure recreational debates as they will never see the consequences of any systemic changes. They have no skin in the game, so the most radical options always seem more appealing. ...and of course there is also intentional foreign influence campaigns to polarize online discussions. I think the way out is to rethink how social media is structured. It's causing some very systemic issues.