You open up Instagram. You’re scrolling through your feed and then you see a flood of posts about the Kavanaugh hearing. All your friends are posting about it. You see long paragraphs about women’s rights and consent, how our government is not doing its job, and I believe her posts. It seems that your entire feed is all about the hearing. Since everyone is posting the same sort of thing you begin to wonder: Should I post about the same sort of thing? Will people judge me if I do not
Social media activism is the way in which we portray our views about what is going on in the world. Social media is a popular way we can get certain issues into the spotlight and is how our generation are voicing our concerns about some of the world’s most important issues. We have seen countless examples of the power of social media from gun violence to the #MeToo movement. Thousands of posts about these issues have flooded our feeds. We have seen the Parkland students, a group of students who went through something tragic and through the power of social media, touched the hearts of many. Their example demonstrates their passion and the use of social media to call for action. The world we live in is filled with opportunities for change and we have the power to make this happen with just the click of a button. However, while many are posting about issues that they truly care about, others just post these things out of impulsive reactions that they may not understand at all.

This can boil down to social media validation that occurs within our generation. The whole stigma around if you didn’t post it, it didn’t happen is just one example of how we can shame people into doing things they don’t want to do or to not live in the moment of today. If we see people posting about these serious issues, many may just post it out of the fear of being judged. Also, when we do post these things we can have this feeling that overwhelms us because we felt that we did something important in the world. While it may be good that these issues are being spread, we need to be able to follow through on the political things we post. We need to get involved so we are not just saying this needs work without actually putting in the work ourselves. We need to be able to get involved with these issues because we need to show that we truly care, instead of hiding behind a screen to voice these issues.

One way is by getting involved. Teens can get involved in politics pretty easily by informing themselves of the complexities of certain issues at hand. By informing yourself, you can educate others about these issues, which can have an impact on them. This is one of the easiest and most effective ways to engage yourself with the news in our world.

Another way to get politically active is by going out to debates, rallies or other political events. These events are great opportunities to learn more about a candidate who could possibly be representing you and issues that can be major turning-points in elections. To make these events more fun, go out and drag a group of friends along. This can make an event more fun and it can help get your friends politically active.

While social media activism is important, we cannot have that be the whole way we voice opinions. We need to get out and actually make this change instead of clicking the post button like everyone else. We need to be conscious of these things we post, so we are not being fake in terms of our activism. We cannot just post things that are relevant to what is happening now, but we should examine things we hope can be fixed and hope we ourselves can be the solution. We all believe that things need to change to be able to have a better and safer world for future generations, but if we want this to happen, we need to turn off the computer, get up and make change happen.