I think social media should only be seen as a tool to disseminate information – not the
driving force behind social movements and activism. It shouldn’t be convenient
to stand up for what we believe in. We shouldn’t be clicking a few buttons,
typing a few words, and expecting change to just happen. It doesn’t work like
that and it never will. Social movements and activism are about our freedom of
speech, supporting our beliefs and pushing back against a system. This requires
physical movement, discussion and person-to-person interaction.
As technology continues to advance, I’ve been watching human
connection fade. We bury our faces in our phones, tablets, laptops, etc.
consumed by newsfeeds, emails and text messages. A simple conversation between
two human beings or more is a thing of the past. We’ve taken our discussions
online. But, when we do come together, face to face, we forget how to speak to
each other. We alter our conversations and lose sight of how to understand each
other’s emotions. We don’t have a screen to hide behind.
What I’m getting at is that we can’t use social media as a
foundation for social movements or activism, because it’ll die as fast as
pushing the “post” button. It gets buried, disorganized, shredded, lost in
translation. We’re so easily forgetting that change takes a tremendous amount
of effort. We can’t sit on our hands, bobbing our head back and forth expecting
our tweet for the day to suddenly give women equal pay, make people believe in
climate change and so on.
I do think social media has a purpose. It does give ample
opportunity to mobilize people to take action in larger numbers on the streets
and engage those who normally wouldn’t be involved. But to make it the driving
force cheapens the whole purpose of social movements and activism. Use it to
garner attention. Don’t expect it to do the change for you.
Stephanie-- I really loved what you said in your closing statement. "Don't expect it to do the change for you." I think this is such a great statement. I feel a lot of people think that by expressing their opinion over and over again is going to bring some sort of change. I mean don't get me wrong I think it is great to get the word out there and to bring awareness to the movement or cause , but it is not going to change the world. Actions speak louder than words. We need to make sure that our actions are doing just that. I feel that we need to step away form the keyboard, put our iPhones down, and really give the moments the chance they deserve.
ReplyDeleteStephanie - I completely agree that social media has made "activism" into something too convenient. It's made people lazy. They feel they've contributed to a movement just by retweeting something or changing their profile picture. I think it's great that things like Twitter allow for information to get out quickly and for discourse to occur, but we need to see more physical movements if we want any change to happen.
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