Everybody’s addicted to their phones. I’m addicted to my phone. Every friend I can name off the top of my head is also addicted to their phone. It seems like the more we burst into a bubble overfilled with technology, the less this revelation becomes shocking.
I mean, how could we not be addicted? We can text friends across the world, take an infinite amount of atrocious 0.5 selfies, and essentially do anything our mind desires. However, when it comes to activism, we can’t continue being digital activists that solely focus on spreading awareness. With our digital platform only increasing, 46% of social media users have reported that they are politically engaged online according to the Pew Research Center.
In the midst of the pandemic, when society seemed to be bursting from its inside, we transitioned our activism to a completely digital landscape. Social media users went to Instagram to repost carousel-like posts, attempting to spotlight various social issues such as Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, Project 2025, and during the 2020 election, commentary on both Biden and Trump.
This complete dependency on digital activism, especially on social media apps, a section of
apps that were always branded as entertainment was unprecedented. According to Melissa Camache, a professor at San Francisco State University, this format of digital activism has completely revolutionized how the average user receives and processes stretching from genocides in Congo to school shootings in their own backyard.
“All [these] components have created a digital culture where it becomes a mainstay in activism,” Camache said. “[It] has now become a primary force within any kind of activism that we need to perform.”
However, this rapid and complete dominance of social media activism isn’t where activism efforts can cease to exist in other domains. Digital activism is beneficial, yes, but it’s simply not enough to be the only action taken towards social chan ge. There must be a fundamental difference between mimesis, the process of communicating through mimicry and creating a call to action. Simply communicating activism-related topics isn’t inherently activism, you must be engaged in physical, online or global efforts for societal transformation.
“But if you communicate with a purpose, with the purpose to call to action, your communication is going to take a different tone and it’s going to be received differently,” Camache said.
Since we’ve become so inundated with information on social media, our sense of urgency, and anxiety when we read about social injustices has been increasingly diminished. Constantly being surrounded by an influx of complex, global conflicts and the subsequent constant re-posting desensitizes us to feel a sense of injustice whenever we observe a human rights violation.
I’ve noticed this desensitization occur in myself, too. Soon, social problems all blur together, and as a result, my emotional response to act on behalf of the cruelty is diminished. In a National Institute of Health study, 20-30% of users showcased a lower emotional reaction to graphic content after frequent exposure to social media platforms. This level of desensitization will only spread as we become more inclined to live according to our phones.
Professor Ashley Larson of Electronic Communications at San Francisco State University remarks that once the awareness level of activism is complete, we must transform that ferocity into tangible efforts.
“A huge part is figuring out what [you] can do in your day-to-day schedule other than resharing a post or liking something,” Larson said “Either that’s reflecting on what organizations to donate to or volunteer at, your actions need to be followed up.”
We’ve become too complacent in our current mindset of what “activism” constitutes and until we can actively shift our perspective to welcome and emphasize physical efforts, in addition to online actions, then society will be stuck in an endless loop of empty-handed promises. Digital activism in the form of spreading awareness on certain issues will never be ineffective but simply your social media presence on a topic doesn’t constitute a ‘ground-breaking’ activism effort. The power is with the people and together, we must use our voice to set a precedent, a precedent of dissatisfaction when it comes to humanity’s suppression.