Modern online media, such as Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, enable anyone\nto become an information producer and to offer online content for potentially\nglobal consumption. By increasing the amount of globally accessible real-time\ninformation, today's ubiquitous producers contribute to a world, where an\nindividual consumes vanishingly smaller fractions of all produced content. In\ngeneral, consumers preferentially select information that closely matches their\nindividual views and values. The bias inherent in such selection is further\nmagnified by today's information curation services that maximize user\nengagement (and thus service revenue) by filtering new content in accordance\nwith observed consumer preferences. Consequently, individuals get exposed to\nincreasingly narrower bands of the ideology spectrum. Societies get fragmented\ninto increasingly ideologically isolated enclaves. These enclaves (or\necho-chambers) then become vulnerable to misinformation spread, which in turn\nfurther magnifies polarization and bias. We call this dynamic the paradox of\ninformation access; a growing ideological fragmentation in the age of sharing.\nThis article describes the technical, economic, and socio-cognitive\ncontributors to this paradox, and explores research directions towards its\nmitigation.\n