Photo Courtesy of Sanket Mishra- Pexels
It is easy to blame social media for societal problems. Even thought social media presents its issues, it is time for us to hold ourselves accountable for our inaction.
During one of my classes this week, we had a discussion on the poet Eavan Boland’s assessment of memory, specifically the two facets of retrieving memories. The first facet is the actual retrieval of that memory, in which that experience is frozen in place for the mere observation of it. However, the second facet is the reenactment of that memory, in which we try to insert the actions we wish we took during that experience into that retrieved memory.
The idea of reenactment is a powerful one, and raises a lot of questions and personal memories for most of us. How many times have you gone through an experience and wished you reacted differently?
While this is a rhetorical question, I am sure that most readers would answer that they frequently think this way. Personally, I have spent countless hours of my life thinking and rethinking over memories of experiences in which I acted in a way that I regret. Unfortunately, the greatest regret, and the most common one, is that of inaction.
Whether it is because of true ignorance or a deliberate attempt to ignore our tendency for inaction, this is a dangerous habit. It seems that the culture we live in prioritizes this inaction when faced with conflict. Not only that, it welcomes it.
At the risk of parroting an increasingly provocative, but still somehow sadly ineffective critique, I believe that social media has embedded this culture of inspired inaction deeply. By inspired inaction, I mean to give a name to the phenomenon of choosing not to act in a crisis or conflict in an attempt to avoid standing out of the crowd. This has been commonly called the Bystander Effect, but that term primarily applies to the belief that someone else will act. Inspired inaction operates under the belief that nobody will act, so therefore you should not either.
So, how does social media factor into this? Well, the most apparent answer is the streamlining of information or reinforcement of trends. By taking in streamlined information, people have begun to understand the world in strict binaries despite all attempts to shake this understanding. Social media itself has changed the language of social interaction through its presentation of these binaries, which are comfortable to live under due to the structure they provide. However, under these binaries, it becomes easier to fall into the mindset that action causes entropy and inaction mitigates that entropy.
The same is true for how trends are presented. We are shown countless videos of the same things being repeated over and over again, which acts as a reinforcement that there is a correct way to act and appease the masses. But when the trend becomes keeping to yourself and not engaging in crises, what good are you doing yourself and those around you?
Most of the videos we view on forms of social media with short-form content are videos that either critique other people, show a public freakout or altercation, or include people complaining about things without taking action. On a subconscious level, the language of social media rewires our brains to accept these trends and bites of information as a reality. Sadly, this reality is one that applauds and finds entertainment in inaction.
And to ensure that we do not have time to question what is being given to us on the screen, this information is provided in fast-paced, short-form videos. Ray Bradbury’s famous Fahrenheit 451 points to this phenomenon, as the world he invents in his science-fiction novel is one that moves too fast to process internalizations and actions until it is too late. This kind of societal pacing is one of the most visible enablers of inspired inaction.
While not the only cause of inspired inaction, social media is definitely the most prominent and should be used cautiously. I invite you to reflect on how often you choose to ignore a compulsion to behave differently to avoid standing out, and to examine where this ignorance is coming from. If we continue to live in a world that rewards inspired inaction, we continue to act as our own censors.