I don't believe that is bold to say that the 2020 civil rights movement wouldn't have been as big as it was without social media. The new wave of protests were kickstarted through the spread of the video displaying the death of George Floyd. Without social media, the video would not have reached such a broad audience of people. Social media allowed for intense conversations and an outlet for people to express the injustices they experience and well as those that have happened to other people. People who never had a voice suddenly had one through social media. It helped users find a community to which they belong. Social media events like Blackout Tuesday, a day where users posted black squares to show their support of the Black Lives Matter movement, spread across the internet. Hashtags were also useful for users to learn more about news surrounding the movement and protests.
Despite how wonderful social media can be for some, it can also be very harmful to these important movements. Social media enables people to be what is called a performative activist. These are people who post about social issues, but never take action to contribute to the solution. These also tend to be the people who receive all of their information off of social media. This contributes to another problem that social media usage has encouraged. Because of Instagram infographics, or Twitter posts by an organization, people do not conduct their own research. When someone's knowledge is sourced from social media, their understanding of a subject will be dense and unreliable. Social media will never be a reliable source for news because of how easy it is to manipulate content.
The pace of social media hot topics is another example of its negative effect on social justice movements. While the Black Lives Matter movement was prominent for some time, it did noticeably dwindle away online. People moved on like they would do with an internet trend. Even now, I will rarely see a post highlighting the BLM movement despite how it took the internet by storm over a year ago. This is very detrimental because civil rights and social justice movements are more important, still prominent, and more historically long lasting than what trends on the internet. While social media helps tremendously with initial spread, it is too common for users to quickly move on to the next thing.
From today forward, social media will have a huge affect on how history is documented. After all, they say once something is out on the internet, it is there forever. We have access to pictures, videos, opinions, and more, which are digitally timestamped forever. As long as we continue to have the internet, social media will continue to document and provide insight to our lives for the future historians of the world. Not only will they be able to have a lot more insight to social issues, but an idea on how we think, our senses of humor, our political views, and how that contributes context to the issues we are currently facing in this world and how we will potentially solve them.
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