East Lansing, December 2025.
MSUToday has published a helpful summary of new research findings from earlier this year with Keith Hampton and Kelley Cotter. The study confirms a key finding: young people from rural areas who attend university develop more racially and ethnically diverse social contacts. This increased diversity is directly related to them becoming more socially tolerant (i.e., more accepting of different people). Historically, this change did little to increase social tolerance within rural areas, as students typically reduced contact with their home communities and often chose not to move back after graduation. However, social media may be altering this dynamic. The research explores two competing hypotheses regarding how students maintaining their home ties via social media could affect their networks and tolerance:
1) Maintaining ties back home through social media appears to constrain the diversity of the students’ networks, thereby limiting social tolerance.
2) Conversely, it appears to expand the networks of the rural contacts they maintain online (we studied parents), which could ultimately reduce intolerance that tends to be more prevalent in rural communities.
The paper can be downloaded or read here: tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369118X.2025.2460556
The MSU Today Post can be found here: msutoday.msu.edu/news/2025/12/how-social-media-shapes-tolerance-echo-chambers
New Paper: Disrupting echo chambers? How social media is related to social tolerance through network diversity: linked lives over a major life course event
