The Rise of Armchair Activism

How Online Social Media Activism fails at creating lasting movements and motivating people to take action in the real world.

As of late, social media has been inundated with a myriad of different social and political movements, springing up and capturing massive amounts of attention as they are reposted and liked by millions of people. This has been by and large a positive change. Whereas otherwise many young people would seldom hear much about more local movements, now pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and Belarus, Black Lives Matter protests in the United States, and the cultural genocide in Xinjiang have reached a global audience. More than ever, youth are engaged in international movements, as instead of having to read dry new articles for extended periods of time, all they need to do is open Instagram to be given short and informative posts about all kinds of issues and ways to help. More recently, this phenomenon occurred during the 2021 Israel-Palestine crisis, during which Palestinians along with others sympathetic to their cause used social media platforms to disseminate information and create a global call to action.

However, these massive social media movements all suffer from one key issue: a lack of longevity. So far, none of these movements have managed to stick around for very long with the same fervor that they initially had. Most of them receive little attention on social media anymore. You’ll be hard-pressed now to find posts with a lot of traction still talking about the nationwide protests in Belarus and Hong Kong, even though these protests and the resulting crackdowns against them have intensified. In Hong Kong, the Chinese government recently passed the National Security law, making it possible to get arrested for speaking out against the Chinese government (whereas before people had a right to freedom of speech not afforded to those in mainland China). Likewise, in Belarus, the government has been arresting tens of thousands of people along with hijacking planes carrying journalists critical of the government, yet there is little talk of this on social media.

There are a few factors leading to the short lifespan of social media activist movements. The most notable of these is that these movements fuel apathy. When people sign a petition and share a post to their story, often they feel as though they have done enough for a movement without actually engaging in meaningful longer-term activism and calls to action; this is effectively token support and it leads to Slacktivism, a term used to define activism that raises awareness but creates little actual change. According to a study done by the University of British Columbia, people who engage in this token activism are not any more likely to engage in actual meaningful action than people who didn’t do anything at all. While token activism doesn’t lead to a decrease in action, this figure is concerning because typically when someone contributes to a movement in other ways i.e. by donating money or participating in a charity event, they are more likely to help more in the future in the same way. Thus, while these social media movements are drawing attention to this topic, they are not having as much effect as one might expect they are because they don’t particularly incentivize real action. Attention to an issue ought to be a given, solving and increasing real support for a movement will actually do something and is what people who want to make an impact should be focusing on.

So, how could this actually be fixed; how are activists going to get people to mobilize and realize they need to do more for a movement than reposting something onto their stories on Instagram? First and foremost would be having multiple simultaneous campaigns for certain issues with some more focused on calling people to action and others more focused on giving an overview of the issue. This does not mean simply talking about telling people which petitions to sign (something notorious for rarely doing anything), this means giving people more specific information on community events and protests, telling people what they can do to help from home, and mobilizing people to volunteer or get involved really in any other way then on social media as it is only through this that people can get involved in action for longer than the few months that it’s popular on social media. However, the onus is also on us young people to stand for what’s right, whether or not it’s convenient or easy to do so. It is also our responsibility to pick our battles and to not try to help solve everything at once. If you find an issue that you are truly passionate about, it will make it easier to do something about it and to push change. Despite gen-z’s shortening attention span, action has to be taken by young people today and not allow ‘slacktivism’ and apathy to become the norm.