On Sept. 10, 2025, Sam — a Palo Alto High School student who has requested to remain anonymous — watched as the people around them celebrated a man’s death. That man was conservative commentator Charlie Kirk, who was shot in the neck at a Utah college campus while hosting an open debate.
“That was my breaking point,” Sam said. “I really lost respect for those people.”

Sam described standing in shock as some cheered and some openly hoped the same fate would befall President Donald Trump. In Sam’s eyes, the people around her had let their political beliefs override their humanity.

For some, like Sam, this was an unsettling day, but across the United States, this is becoming the new normal. According to a 2024 Johns Hopkins University poll, 45% of American voters consider members of the opposing party “downright evil.”

But what does it mean when nearly half of a country’s voters think of the other side as enemies? 

Clare Ashcraft, a Media Analyst from AllSides, a company whose goal is to create a balanced newsfeed and media bias ratings calls it affective polarization — an “us versus them” mentality.

“Affective polarization happens when we feel positively toward members in our party and negatively toward those outside of our party,” Ashcraft said. 

Ashcraft says understanding the root of the problem comes with separating two terms that are often confused: polarization and extremism. It is possible to be polarized from someone whose view is not technically considered ‘extreme.’

“The difficulty with defining extremism is that it’s very subjective,” Ashcraft said. “What seems extreme to me may not seem extreme to you and vice versa.”

The problem is not that Americans hold different views. Instead, it is that they have started to hate each other for it. According to the Pew Research Center, the number of Americans with a highly negative view of the opposing party has more than doubled since 1994. 

“It’s a misconception that polarization results from extreme views,” Ashcraft said. “More moderate views or views that are closer to the center are not always inherently better [at preventing polarization] or more correct.”

And it’s no coincidence that polarization has worsened as technology use has increased, psychology teacher Melinda Mattes notes. 

“We go on social media, [interact with posts and videos], and get more of what we like, so we end up in a sort of this echo chamber of similar views,” Mattes said. “We lose track of that anchor and reality of the other side of the story.”

The psychological mechanism behind this is called group polarization, which Mattes says is as old as human social behavior, social media only supercharged it. Group polarization happens when a group of people who share the same opinions, build upon one another until they’re completely polarized to that belief.

“It feels really good and validating when we believe something, and we read about other people who also believe that,” Mattes said. “So it takes a lot of effort to go and seek out the other side.”

Not everything people encounter online is true either, and unlike traditional news outlets, social media has no one fact checking.

“Anybody can post stuff online, and it could be news in quotes,” Mattes said. “It can be totally false, and they don’t even have to be a reputable source.”

For students who have grown up inside this media landscape, the effects are hard to escape and even harder to recognize. To Alex, an anonymous student, the content they have seen on social media has shaped the way they see groups of people, an example being those that are anti-abortion rights.

“I feel like they [those who hold extreme views] are pretty closed-minded and won’t hear out other people’s opinions or what people might be going through,” Alex said. “In ‘pro-life’ cases, people have views based on what their religion might say or what they’ve been taught. They shut their mind off to learning about specific cases. In some ways, it can stop people from having empathy.”

A lack of understanding between groups can often lead to stereotyping and generalizations. For students such as senior Evanllelyn Sanchez Vargas, co-president of the Latinos Unidos club, these media-caused negative impacts directly affect public perception of her community.

“Sometimes we’re treated as numbers [by] politicians, which is definitely dehumanizing,” Sanchez Vargas said.

That dehumanization, felt acutely by marginalized communities, is one aspect of a larger national divide, a fracture that has left millions of Americans feeling alienated from one another and from the political process itself.

“Most Americans don’t belong to loud extremes and are instead a part of what we call the ‘exhausted majority,’” Ashcraft said. “The exhausted majority is tired of polarization and fighting.”

Sanchez Vargas, whose community often sits at the center of one political debate in the country, says the answer is simple.
“I don’t think we should dehumanize anyone,” Sanchez Vargas said. “We should really consider all the circumstances…[and we] need to care more about every single person.”

Ashcraft knows this tension from experience. Raised as a liberal in a conservative Catholic family in Ohio, she describes a moment during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests where the divide entered her home.

“I sometimes felt they [my family] were immoral for their beliefs,” Ashcraft said, “and that was difficult because I also knew they were great people.”

Navigating this tension led her to organizations like Braver Angels and AllSides, and this gradually changed her. Relationships and honest conversations opened her to perspectives she had never considered.

Students like junior Mathilde Hyunh have turned to politically oriented groups, such as Youth and Government, to help them steer away from this exhaustion Ashcraft described. 

“Youth and Government has made it way easier for me to talk to people I disagree with,” Hyunh said. “It has really shown me that you’re debating the idea, not the person.”

Youth and Government is an organization stemming from the YMCA that teaches teenagers how to draft bills in California and debate policies at conferences throughout the year, including visiting the state capitol in Sacramento. 

This is one of many groups students can join that encourage discussions between political groups. These groups are a useful tool to expose oneself to new opinions and debates. A simpler way to get exposed is through the news. 

“If something [seen online] seems like a little much [polarized/extreme], maybe go ‘hm, maybe I’m missing something here,’ and ‘what might the other side argue?’” Mattes said. “Try to go find that, but it can’t be passive.”

Taking the time to engage with the contrasting opinions is ultimately about understanding and connecting with your neighbors.

“Having these types of conversations isn’t about proving you’re right,” Hyunh said. “It’s about trying to understand each other’s point of view.”

Furthermore, having differing opinions is not new nor inherently bad, something Ashcraft wishes more people would realize.

“It’s not only okay for people to have views that are very far apart, but I would argue it’s a good thing for a free and flourishing society to have diverse and divergent perspectives,” Ashcraft said.

The change, she believes, starts with rejecting the idea that politics has to come between people.

“People are tired of politics getting in the way of close relationships with friends and family,” Ashcraft said. “They want community, belonging and the freedom to share their thoughts without walking on eggshells.”

And the movement to get there, Ashcraft says, is closer than most people realize.

“Studies show that if a movement engages 3.5% of a population, it succeeds in changing the broader culture,” Ashcraft said. “In America, that’s about 11 million. That’s an achievable number … We can change the country, and I think people are hungry to do so.”