Recently, someone I know posted a series of tweets expressing her thoughts on the hotly contested national anthem protests. She brought up a smart point on the subject that was articulated remarkably well in six tweets of 140 characters or less, all of which I agreed with, so I retweeted the entire series. Almost immediately afterward, I received a response that was not combative toward her point but instead postulated a new point altogether: “@ people who think tweeting / kneeling during the national anthem will make any microscopic difference: it won’t.”
Can you compare protesting to tweeting? The demonstration in question was, after all, a peaceful protest that incited discussion on the issue of police brutality in the United States. If the criterion for protest is inciting discussion, posting about current events and social issues online does quite the same thing.
Twitter and Facebook are, at their core, platforms for discourse. They are the means through which digitally connected people hear about things, from the news sources they choose to follow, from the trending topics on the sides of the screen or from their friends. And yes, these sources are biased, oftentimes toward the opinion that the user already upholds. Yet, these are the sources that so many people see on a regular basis — there must be some merit to them.
Inciting discussion contributes to visibility, as well as education. In social media, those who lack a voice or large-scale representation in mainstream culture have, for the first time in history, an egalitarian platform that lends itself to the marginalized and voiceless.
To share your experience, all you need is internet access and the will to do so. This is a powerful tool if we choose to tap into it. So why do we regard it as pointless? People have been disseminating their opinions for centuries. Perhaps the reason we do so is not just to make an impact; it could be as simple as the feeling of taking ownership and making meaning out of the world we live in.
Try as we might, it is impossible (and unwise) to do that from one perspective. There is weight in disseminating different viewpoints, even from the so-called “powerless” standpoint of an average citizen. In the era we live in, the average citizen has a voice. We just have to regard our new platforms as viable.
It is unwarranted to say that going to social media for education is a fool’s errand. Never before has popular opinion had to face daily exposure to challenges. How many of us would never have heard the personal accounts of the families whose experiences incited the Black Lives Matter movement otherwise? Or the response of the Stanford rape victim to her attacker’s light sentence? These viewpoints circulated largely online, and filled in the gaps in emotion that mainstream news cannot provide.
We have the internet to thank for coloring in how the public understood these cases, and the internet to thank for the calls for change that ensued afterward. If the political sphere of young people is as apathetic as it is believed to be, then finding a niche that fosters passionate discussion — and very real change — should be treated as the stunningly important event that it is.
If the world unfolding on your screen seems nonsensical, don’t throw your hands up at it. Engage with it. Listen to, or rather read, those opinions that you would not normally have access to, and realize how lucky you are to have access. And, honestly, what “microscopic difference” will it make? It is safe to say that the only way to change the world is to call on people to think differently. How else can you do that, besides giving them the means and the information to do so?
Erica Prush is a sophomore majoring in English.