Twitter, meanwhile, is a land of bots and trolls that even the most carefully curated feed will struggle to keep out and where a 280-character limit promises not reason and depth but appeals to shallow emotion.

By now, we know the social media giants are not going to change. Their revenue model is too tied to keeping us online, collecting our personal data and preferences and then selling them to all comers -- often without consent.

Congress needs to address social media companies’ position as the major publishers of our age. It also needs to address the way internet companies use and sell personal data. Our sense of politics is that if change is to come, it has to bubble up from the people. The pols in D.C. will spend their time watching the polls or being pulled aside by lobbyists for the internet giants.

It will be up to us as Americans to ask hard questions about who we are and how we want to relate to one another. In 2019, we have to be willing to treat one another online as neighbors and fellow citizens. We have to be willing to hear one another out and to respond not from our gut but from our minds. And then support leaders who emulate such behavior.

We also need to be willing to hold social media accountable for the material it spreads, for the way it treats our personal data as a commodity and for the division it so often sows among us. That can mean speaking up about it, or reducing the frequency we use it or saying goodbye to certain sites altogether in hopes that more ethical companies will replace them.

The old saying “we are what we eat” applies here. We are what we consume. And with social media, that consumption is too often unhealthy. Let’s stop this year and do something about it.