Social Media Activism

As many devastating incidents happen around the world, social media has become the primary method of spreading awareness. It has been an ongoing debate of whether social media activism is actually benefiting the cause. Many people decide that social media activism contributes to the harm of the situation because it takes away attention from organizations that directly help the cause. Personally, when users post about a catastrophe on Instagram to call attention to it, the user is not usually doing anything to reduce the sufferings of the affected people. Some people believe this act should not be done so that more attention can go towards accounts that directly fund or interact with the people in need. In some ways, social media activism is extremely effective on behalf of educating people from various parts of the world about a specific incident. For example, when a war recently broke out in Sudan, thousands of Instagram users changed their profile picture to the color blue in honor of Sudan’s flag. Another instance was when Kashmir and Pakistan had this intense dispute. Users from all over the world posted about this event on their stories which spread plenty of awareness. Social media activism is considered extremely beneficial according to some people. On the other hand, people claim that social media activism takes attention away from accounts that actually support the specific catastrophe, which is also true. There were some accounts that donated one dollar to Sudan for every ten likes when war first broke out in Sudan. Accounts like these truly support the cause at hand and make an impact on the people in need. People frown upon social media activism because a few Instagram accounts fake their contribution to the incident. These accounts false advertise to people who actually want to help, which takes away attention that should actually belong to other, real accounts. Indeed, this idea has been a main subject of controversy as stated. There are definitely many positives and negatives to social media activism including spreading awareness and depriving helpful accounts of their well deserved attention. However, every user online possesses the choice of how to run their own accounts.