What social media does to social life.

10/11/2022

As a 20 year old girl in todays society, the social media is more than just a way of communicating. Social media = life. In the least dramatic way possible, social media is everything. In the TED talk “the tribes we lead”, Seth Godin talks about how in todays age of the social media empire, and anyone being able to attain one, we often forget how easy it is to start a movement. He goes on to talk about how a movement today is so unlike a movement was before the popularity of social media. You don’t have to have the ear or the eye of everyone, but you just have to get the attention of the people who are just as passionate or excited about your cause as you are and then your movement has begun.

TED Talk: The Tribe We Lead by Seth Godin

I can recognize the positivity in this, being able to promote change in such an accessible way. But, I also have to be honest when I admit that this can also be really dangerous. I feel like movements are often talked about exclusively under the guise of positivity, but there is a darker side to this that can be exacerbated by the accessibility that social media gives it. The overall premise of the TED talk is anyone can start any movement for anything. The Black Lives Matter movement is a prime example of how this can be positive and a negative. Over the pandemic, BLM grew into a worldwide movement spawning from the death of George Floyd. While the entire world was on lockdown, millions of people rocked their lives to march and fight for the rights of black people. Social media was the catalyst for this movement. (Sidenote: I also feel like in a way this is an example of how social media will never go away, because the minute everyone was forced inside and there was nothing to post about, nothing to really share, people started posting more, snaring more, and then George Floyd died and social media was back and had a stronger presence than ever). Without social media, there wouldn’t have been a fraction of the change that we saw come to fruition. But, there was also a performative aspect to the movement. White people being intentionally antagonizing to gain recognition, people looting and destroying and taking video of it. All encompassed together the movement had direction and purpose, and served the greater good, but this was an example when a mass movement propelled primarily through social media.

Organizations that perpetuate negative hateful ideals and concepts like white supremacy or anti-semitic, gun lobbyists, pedophiles, etc., are also allowed to share and grow through social media as well. The internet is always perceived as such an open space that exposes people to everything, and vice versa, but the flip side of that theory is the fact that as the internet developed it has become just as private and accessible as it is public. What I mean by this is these groups, knowing that they are culturally unacceptable, but still have a following, use the internet as a means of communication. However, the means in which they use the internet is such that it isn’t something that someone who is not looking for it or invited to it can access therefore it is private.

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