The constant Instagram stories. The flood of tweets. The aesthetic infographics detailing issues around the world. We’ve all seen and reposted them.
#BlackOutTuesday. Save Yemen. Pray for Beirut.
These are our cries and our demands. Yet once we share the post to our story, retweet the news story, and learn about the injustices of the world, we look away, perhaps out of horror from our place of privilege, or from feeling unable to create change. We let these issues surrounding us simply fade into the cacophony that is social media.
But how how can we blame ourselves, we ask? There’s just something new every day, too much to keep track of! We’re just in high school, it’s not like we can even vote! We don’t know how to fix things, so it’s better to keep forwarding the information until it reaches someone that does!
The all-too-common thoughts pervade our minds every time we engage in performative activism, inaction out of ease. We just click the “share” button and move on. “Sorry, but it’s not my problem.” We clamor for change yet we take no part in actually enforcing change. We demand accountability yet we hold none accountable. And still, we wonder why no one is doing anything.
It’s true, we, as high schoolers, can’t vote out the people who are refusing to make change. Yet, as the most technologically knowledgeable generation, we hold the key to knowing about the issues. The vital part is continuing on and affecting change rather than passively hoping for it to happen. Just look at the Black Out Tuesday posts we all so eagerly posted to show our support for the Black Lives Matter movement; how many people actually went out and protested, or donated money, or made an effort to become more knowledgeable on the situation? I certainly didn’t; I made the post and moved on because I thought I had no way of affecting change.
I think the issue that our generation grapples with is not our views on social issues—we are generally progressive and want to enact social change. The issue is that we don’t believe in ourselves to make that change. We are so apathetic to the political process that we simply abandon it entirely. Think about how often we wish to change something in our government, however small, but we just don’t do anything about it. There are so many avenues for us to pursue; name an issue you are passionate about and there’s a way to affect change. Tired of education policy at your school? Meet your school board members and inform them! Hold them accountable! Wish your local city would remove a confederate monument? Call your city council members and demand change!
When a government that is meant to follow the will of the people instead undermines it, it is our collective responsibility to hold them accountable. Inundated by social media on countless issues facing our country, we need to start acting rather than hoping.