Social Media's shortcomings

"Where activists were once defined by their causes, they are now defined by their tools" writes Malcom Gladwell in The New Yorkers' most recent online incarnation.  In today's world, he can hardly be talking about anything other than social media.  The world is in the middle of a revolution, we are told, a revolution in communications aided by impossibly speedy technology.  This revolution is only made possible by the likes of Twitter and Facebook, of course.  Become social media savvy or get left in the dust.

Social media has undoubtedly redefined activism, information and communication.  People now feel empowered simply because they've clicked a 'like' button, or retweeted an article about the concrete action of someone else.  Amateur activists are budding up all over the place, and yet, we don't see them because they are hunched over behind their computer screens, tweeting and following to save the world.  The Western world has now defined social change and activism in social media terms, furthering the confusion between 'tweetivism' and actual social change.

Namely, just because a group of people met on Twitter doesn't mean their mission or cause would have been impossible without the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are less than a decade old, and this world has seen much more far-reaching revolutions in the previous decades than in our current time.  Rosa Parks sat in the "wrong" seat on a bus and now, anyone can sit wherever they want on public transportation.  Four students refused to receive inferior services that were designated for 'negroes' and by the time the protest was over, upwards of 70,000 students in every state in The South had participated (which may have included incarceration and/or polics brutality).

To claim that social media is the spearhead of a revolution is to potentially discount all the hard(er) work of those who have gone before us, who have given us (women) the right to vote, us (African Americans) equal access to services, and us (humanity) a more level playing field.  And it all happened without Facebook, Twitter, or even email.  It happened all without computers, in fact.  Real people meeting in the real world, facing real problems in person.  Social media may be our all-consuming present, but it is not the driving factor of our radical, socially-conscious, activist-laden past.

Ironically, social media has decreased our social interaction, at least how it used to be defined (which involved some sort of physical proximity).  While social media does have the power to make or break a reputation, its redefining of 'activism' and 'information' does not automatically lead to a revolution - at least not of the kind of which we have seen our society to be capable.  Why should business care?  Because, probably your customers or clients are real people, probably they live in the real world, and probably, they can at least imagine the idea of a relationship being more than email exchange (if that, anymore).

Photo Credit: Farheen Aqueel