Om Patel0:01 So I wanted to talk about the question of are young people actually changing politics or are they just posting about it?0:11 Um a lot of people my age care about big issues like climate change, quality, and mental health, but sometimes it feels like it feels like this activism, in a sense, is is just turned into posting online because it agrees with a certain trend line that you follow or a group of your friends follow, or something along those lines, you know, sharing a hashtag or a story because everyone else is doing it instead of actually taking a real action.0:37 Um you know, it's just activism without the actual effort.0:41 It's just trying to fit in because everybody else has made it a social norm to, you know, spread awareness of these things.0:47 I think social media still plays an important role.0:50 It spreads the awareness fast and gives young people the voice that used to be ignored.0:54 But the key is just turning that awareness into action instead of just what it is, just in post.1:00 It's turning it into action, voting, volunteering, organizing.1:03 Real change isn't just gonna come from behind a screen or going viral, it's gonna show up.1:08 It's gonna come whenever people actually show up.
Thomas Freer0:00 I couldn't agree more.0:01 Um, I mean, people these days love to post a Ukrainian flag in their Instagram bio or their Twitter and think that that's doing anything when honestly they probably have no idea what's even going on over there.0:16 And supporting other countries like Ukraine, um, you know, who's at war with Russia and obviously Ukraine did nothing wrong is great, but but posting it in your Instagram bio doesn't accomplish anything.0:30 And there needs to be some level of either you know, protest to your politicians, your local ones or your national ones, or or get out there and try to debate with people or educate people instead of just like posting this one thing out there on social media.0:50 Everyone on social media can just watch something, scroll into the next thing.0:54 They might even forget they even saw it.0:56 Um so I just feel like it doesn't do as much good as they think it might do.1:01 Um and again, I think that people should be talking in person or debating on uh platforms like these, and actually talking to each other and human connection is the only way we're gonna accomplish goals.
Leeza Kurtz0:00 That's a good point that you're using there, and what you're kind of referring to is known as performative activism, which you know, as you kind of described in your video, is when people post about things, bring awareness about things, but it's more so for the intent of showing other people like look, like I care about these things too, but it's obviously performative because they're not actually making an impact.0:26 And I don't think I don't think that you know, you kind of mentioned how like viral videos and that sort of thing doesn't actually make an impact.0:34 And I do disagree with you there.0:36 I do think that there are times in which people are genuinely unaware of something, and then you might see something on social media that maybe you wouldn't have seen on the regular news that genuinely does maybe not change your mind on something but bring awareness to something that you maybe didn't know about before.0:57 But I will say, with you know, a lot of like Instagram stories on people who aren't even public accounts, like accounts where you know like only your friends are gonna see, and especially when most of your friends and family are people who already have the same beliefs as you that's when it gets redundant and pointless.1:16 Like, what is the point of posting about your political opinion or about something when all of your followers agree it's not actually raising awareness, you know.1:29 It I think there's differences to it.1:32 Like if you are on like a public account and you're genuinely trying to wait raise awareness about something that you don't think that your followers already like previously know about, then I think there can be some value from that, and I do think that social media is a valuable tool for political activists to spread awareness, but it's just kind of sorting through the performative activism and the real activism, I guess.2:02 And then also while keeping in mind that the way social media works is that you essentially get the most engagement from people that already agree with you.2:12 So it's kind of trying to like take away the grain of salt, like maybe you're posting about something that you think you're spreading awareness about, but in reality, your only audience is people who already have the same opinion as you, and in that case, again, it's not really serving to help anyone.