Throughout the semester in our class we have been discussing the positive and negative effects of social media. In the blogs and discussions in class I have been partial to the positive aspects. Whether it was discussing the utility of twitter, the changing features of books/textbooks, the choices we have, copyright laws, or discussing the philosophical ‘Library of Babel,’ my mind shifted to the potential greatness of technology, the internet and social media. Being born into a culture where many of us have unlimited access to the internet allows most of our generation to digest ideas, opinions and beliefs that our parents and grandparents could not find so easily. This is great for social change and it allows our generation to keep an open mind and form our own opinions. This has been an argument of mine for the whole semester and I believe it’s a valid one.

However, recent events has led me to see the great downfall of our generation: Slacktivism. If you were on the internet about a month ago you probably know about and saw the STOP KONY campaign video. Now there are many things wrong with this campaign and the top-down development, non-profit, Invisible Children. However, that is NOT what this blog post is about. You can read about why the campaign and non-profit is not worth supporting here, here or even here.

Within hours my Facebook and Twitter pages were overtaken with the video. The idea was simple, watch this video and stop Joseph Kony. But How is watching this video going to stop a notorious terrorist thousands of miles away? The narrator did tell the young people to video to contact their senator. But how many actually did? I don’t know the numbers and I can’t find any on how many kids actually wrote to their senators. But I would be willing to bet a lot that most of the kids who posted the campaign video did not write their senators. I know more than half of the people that came up on my Facebook and Twitter supporting this cause did not do anything else besides posting the video.

This is just the most recent and widespread example. (You can read about the different forms of slacktivism here.)  It seems to me that social media has created a problem of inactivity. This is where technology, the internet and social networking is a problem. We can find out multiple sides to an issue, read about the right way to go about social change and then we can post about it on our Facebook. But then what? For our generation, it stops there. What do we do next? Our generation needs to understand that social change can start behind the computer but we must get out behind our computers,get out there and create action.