Lindsey Komson

Featured image by cottonbro studio

Social media is an unparalleled force in today’s world.

Before social media, how could people share groundbreaking news and information with others? Sending letters in the mail, writing stories in the newspaper, or maybe getting a story big enough it’s covered on the news. Consuming information from those mediums might inspire people to bring about change, but it all happens pretty slowly from start to finish.

Social media allows people to share information with the world with a click of a button. Instead of reaching one person like a letter, a local population like a newspaper, or a national audience lie a television news story, social media allows people to reach millions or even billions of people so easily.

And it might be nice to have a photo of a cute dog go viral (or a dress that people can’t tell the color of), but social media is incredibly important for spreading important movements with the world and driving change.

Like we saw with the Arab Spring, using social media to inform the public of governmental oppression can lead to high-level change. It also leads to a widespread understanding that people have power – anyone with a cell phone can drive monumental change in the world.

This point is further supported by the fact that governments in countries like Russia, North Korea, and China suspend access to the internet and/or social media as a means of censorship. Knowing how much power social media can have when people rally around a movement or corrupt regime, those governments prevent that from happening by providing limited and/or no social media access.

It’s clear that social media can be used to “right the wrongs” done in society and provide a means for any person to create change. In the future, I’m sure that social media will be used to give a voice to the voiceless and create change in all levels of society.