Raising Awareness Is Great. But It’s Not Enough.

When it comes to raising awareness of injustice, the Internet is a double edged sword. On one hand, we have ever-expanding means to communicate in real-time on a person-to-person basis, making it easier than ever to see how people live around the world. With just a few clicks, videos of police brutality or updates from war zones are spread to people across the globe, making human suffering real in a way traditional media simply can’t.

But on the other hand, does knowing about human rights violations or unfair prison sentences really make a difference? In an age when a quick Internet search can turn up almost limitless information about any given issue, is awareness enough? Or have Millennials simply learned how to turn tragedy into memes? It’s an important, albeit uncomfortable, question.

The internet is a perfect storm for the kind of passive compassion that has developed over the past few years. People and organizations are able to create viral campaigns—think Kony 2012—that spread like wildfire in part because the public really does care about these issues on some level. Sharing a video or posting a hashtag gives them the sense of being involved in a movement aimed at stopping something they find abhorrent, and as the campaign gathers more and more steam more and more people want to get onboard. Facebook likes, network news segments analyzing social media trends, celebrities holding up signs on the red carpet—it builds and builds until it’s impossible to get online without seeing something about, say, “Bring Back Our Girls” or calls for boycotting companies involved in garment factory disasters.

Then the tide turns. Another tragedy strikes or progress is taking too long or people just lose interest, and suddenly these once all-consuming issues are nowhere to be found. Just like other viral content, the slogans and dedicated profile pictures become a former Internet favorite, something by which we will remember the year in retrospect. “Remember when everyone was super into that one campaign?” Maybe we’ll wonder whatever happened to that Kony guy or those girls who were abducted, but our once-fervent concern will have burnt out.

This is what awareness without action does. The Internet has created a cycle by which human suffering is made real, then viral to the point of abstraction, and finally relegated to the dustier corners of the web. To raise the profile of important issues, groups have to rely on the illusion of change created by signing petitions and liking Facebook pages. But most have been unable to capitalize on all that raised awareness and actually achieve the goals that brought interest in the first place. When all the likes and signatures don’t bring about change, the public loses interest and the opportunity—if ever there truly was one—is gone forever.

Millennials are good at getting up in arms about issues, and that’s a great thing. But what many have termed “slacktivism” seems to be leading to a waste of what should be our most rebellious and impactful years. Think about generations that came before us, generations marked by massive social upheaval and wide-scale protests. Instead of organizing to show our manpower, we post makeupless selfies and retweet other people’s clever hashtags. Although a large Internet presence is impressive, dictators and war criminals don’t really care if you’re wearing a certain color bracelet to show how angry you are at them. And if you think our government feels differently, well, that’s just wishful thinking. Why be threatened by a group of young people who lodge complaint by wagging their finger over the Internet? We may be mighty, but we’re falling short of our own potential in a big, big way.

So, guys, what do we do here? How do we leverage awareness into actual change? The answer will change from person to person, but universally we need to get involved. That could mean volunteering to canvas a neighborhood or making a donation to an organization we believe in or studying an issue and educating others. Get angry, get upset, but then get into the streets and make a difference.