Dear social-media: I think we may have a job for you after all.
Youth Engagement is beyond legitimizing social-media and traditional markers of ‘progress’.

I want to start off by questioning the tokenism that places “youth movements” and social-media tightly sandwiched together. YES, social-media is huge and I recognize its ginormous potential for powerful change, however I dare to step back and ask some simpler questions:

How is ‘youth participation’ measured anyways?
Is social-media really such a ‘catalyst’ for ‘change’?

A few weeks ago, I found a video lecture online where Steve Croth (Better The World Inc.) critiqued social-media for not being a fully developed ‘tool for change’. He gave an example of Facebook, and its use of the Causes app. which highlights issues users care about. He reflected on how cancer, being the biggest cause on Facebook, had over 5 billion members BUT has only succeeded in generating $128,000 in donations. I promise to leave out further Facebook bashing, but I did realize one thing: $$$ monetary $$$ impact seems to be continuously defining many social movements and a prime measurement of progress (social-media or not), which can exclude youth engagement and therefore illegitimate our non-financial impact. I am trying to sort out how we can gauge youth engagement, outside of philanthropic ideals of quantifying progressive measurement in participating in social-change.

The fact is, youth do participate in social change (i.e. advocacy, community organization, art practices, providing direct services, sharing information globally, political involvement etc.) The efforts of youth to create social change will only be recognized once we expand “fund-raising” as the staple marker of progress for youth involvement.

Dear social-media: I think we may have a job for you after all.

For me, activism = education + inspiration + action. Perhaps social-media could be used for the first part of the equation through creating sources of information sharing, whether it’s personal stories that youth can relate to, or connecting to various information hubs. I am not trying to exclude social-media from promoting action, but I’m trying to debunk arbitrary defaults of social-media = action. Yes, social media can raise awareness of current issues and movements, whether global or local, and create opportunities for collaboration across borders. Inspiration, however, comes from individual experiences. It cannot be defined by its exposure in social or traditional media. Although evidence in media can be great examples for us to reflect from (i.e. Young Artists for Haiti) or more traditional philanthropic approaches using social-media (Free the Children), I still believe the rightful credit for change always belongs to how we connect to information, not the information itself.

That is why we need alternative social-media platforms like Taking It Global, which allow information exchanging through various applications and e-learning tools that can connect youth on a global scale. I believe that providing an information-exchanging hub can still have the emotional impact for activism, which can only be documented in the lives of the youth who are able to utilize and contribute to these “online” movements.