Diary of a Gen Z Student: Can we stop with the obligatory activism on social media?

Irish Examiner columnist Jane Cowan photographed at her home in County Meath. Photo: Barry Cronin

Practically every time I open Instagram, at any time of day, I can guarantee that I’ll encounter an infographic or political post of some description. Everyone’s got to be an activist, it seems. 

Generally, these infographics are shared with good intention; people trying to bring attention to the plight of Palestinians, or talking about intersectional feminism, or poverty, or any number of worthy causes. 

But it almost feels like an obligation that everyone on social media must share these political statements. Among other young people, I certainly feel that pressure. 

If you’re not vocal, you’re on the side of the oppressor. But when it comes to whether an ordinary person, with a few followers on Instagram, shares that infographic that’s going around, I don’t buy that sentiment.

It seems to me, making it obligatory to be an activist, only lessens the potency of a cause. If people must post about a cause to be seen as “good”, then the cause gets lost in the mix. 

This is something I’ve become more aware of over the past couple of years. When everyone must have an opinion on everything, and be vocal about it, we find ourselves in some murky waters. 

Of course, not everyone has a coherent, perfectly researched, perfectly perfect, opinion on everything. But social media would have you believe otherwise. And that can feel uncomfortable.

I see so many people that post about every injustice that is trending. They tend to repost things that have come up on their own feed.

These posts often contain lots of buzzwords. On International Women’s Day, I saw people posting about how we must stop celebrating women CEOs; because they uphold the capitalist system that oppresses other women. 

Last week, I saw someone post that the gardaí are Ireland’s biggest crime gang. There wasn’t much reason given for that one, but the person posting it was fairly certain of its validity. Anyone on social media has probably seen something along the same lines.

Because of how Instagram is designed — with an algorithm that will feed you ideas that align with your own beliefs, echoing your comfortably held ideas — it’s easy to blindly hop on the bandwagon, and post what everyone else is posting. 

According to my Instagram, for example, I should denounce CEOs, gardaí, people who use plastic water bottles, people who wear fast fashion. The list goes on. 

It’s frustratingly black and white. And this culture of obligatory activism can vilify people who don’t post about politics on social media so quickly. 

If you’re not vocal online about your moral beliefs, well then, your silence equals “anti-feminist”, “pro-Israel”, “white supremacist”. As if these centuries-old issues aren’t complex and nuanced. 

As if there’s something wrong with you, for not knowing and voicing the right answer to everything. As if there is an answer that is simple enough to fit into an Instagram caption.

If we’re being honest, I think it’s clear that a lot of this activism on Instagram is somewhat of a performance. It’s that aspect of online activism, that I find quite disturbing. 

It has been clearly delineated since the genocide in Gaza began. I have certainly unfollowed accounts that post graphic images of traumatised children in Gaza, as a means of signalling their solidarity. 

There’s something so unnerving about people posting these images, in the same breath as posting about how we can’t trust the gardaí. The effect is so numbing, so dehumanising. 

It feels like a brazen dumping of everything that’s wrong with the world onto your Instagram story. Placing incomparable things on the same plain. The virtue signalling makes a spectacle of an atrocity. Forgetting the real human lives attached to the horrifying images.

I’m not trying to say that all online activism is bad. But influencers who don’t make statements about Gaza are being trolled for not using their platform and it feels like an obligation for everyone with a social media account to make a statement or voice their opinion on everything, so people will blindly say anything, just to have said something. 

And I think we’ve learned at this stage, not to underestimate the power of people spreading misinformed opinions. Not everyone is an activist, or politically informed. That’s just a fact. 

And forcing them to become political activists does little to help a cause, but a lot to undermine it.