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The Social Shell WSS intern Zoe Smith ’24 shares her opinion on virtue signaling, performative activism and social media. BY ZOE SMITH PHOTOS BY CAROLINE BARKER ART & DESIGN BY KAILEY GEE
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OPINION JUNE 3, 2021
fter George Floyd was killed at the hands of a white police officer last summer, Black Lives Matter protests were in full swing. Not only were streets overflowing with protesters, but Instagram feeds were also overflowing with reposts. Anytime something happens in the world, my generation turns to social media to post a pretty little infographic to show that they “truly care” and are “activists.” However, performative activism, such as posting on Instagram, is not activism that will bring meaningful change, and it never will be. Over the past year, I have seen many of my peers fall into a trap of reposting every single thing they see about current issues on social media while clicking through dozens of the same posts and infographics. I, too, have been caught up in the fad of resharing information on social media, purely because I didn’t want my peers to think that those issues don’t matter to me. When I see posts about how a lack of posting “contributes to the problem,” it contributes to the pressure people feel to do the same because they are scared of what others might think if you have a differing opinion. But many people don’t want to post 50 things on their stories that people have already seen, especially if some of that information has fallacies. For example, late last summer, a conspiracy theory claiming that an online store called Wayfair sold furniture containing kidnapped children was widely circulated online. As everything does on the internet, this conspiracy theory spread like wildfire. But in reality, it was a far-right conspiracy theory that someone on TikTok fabricated. Social media can have a large influence on Gen Zers, with 90% of teens ages 13 to 17 using social media according to the American Academy of Childhood and Adolescent Psychiatry, and 75% of those have an active profile. A study done by Common Sense Media also showed 54% of teens rely on social media for their news. This dependency on social media causes people my age to get so caught up in the platform that we forget to actually process and critically evaluate the information we receive. Performative activism can be very harmful. Posting things about different world issues has become a trend and this distracts from the problems at hand. With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was an outpouring of performative activism, one of which being “Black Out Tuesday,” which entailed posting a black screen on your feed with the hashtags #BlackLivesMatter or #BlackoutTuesday. While there were positive intentions, this trend ended up hurting more than helping. As screens overflowed with black screens captioned #BLM, it drowned out Black people who were actually sharing their experiences with systemic racism. Racism does not stop with a black screen. Racism stops with acknowledging the problem and educating yourself and others, and letting others educate you. Performative activism is defined as surface-level activism. I am tired of seeing the hypocrisy of peers who are so enthralled with posting on social media about “saving our planet” and “why we need to stop saying the r-word” while using slurs and throwing their trash out of the window. Information you see on social media isn’t automatically true, and the spread of incorrect information not only discredits news sources but spreads disinforma-