Hashtag Activism Is Not Enough To Change The World

These days viral videos are everywhere and very often there are some political or social message behind it. One day it's about stopping racism, the next day it's about gender equality.

Remember Kony 2012? In a couple days, it massed tens of millions of views yet despite all that public outrage Kony has pretty much been for forgotten.

Why do we no longer care about something that was so big and so emotionally stirring at that time?

To understand more, take a look at this experiment.

Participants were instructed to walk over to another building and given a speech on the story of the Good Samaritan.

Ironically on their path as they walked to the other building there was an injured man.

The question was: Would they stop to help him?

Turns out having the thought of Good Samaritan fresh in their mind didn't make them any more likely to help out.

The one fact that did make the participants more or less likely to help the injured man was if they were in a hurry or not.

If researchers told them that there was no rush 63% percent of people stopped to help, but if they were told to hurry, the vast majority zipped by and only 10% percent helped.

That's a massive difference right?

What this study points to is that maybe it's not that we're heartless. Maybe it's more to do with the context we're in at any given time that determines our willingness to help one another.

So think about it this way. The Good Samaritan story is like these hot film videos, they leave you with a strong message but when you go out into the real world and lose yourself in life's daily problems, that message was forgotten and that's why activism on social media rarely works.

They evoke strong emotions, but it's only temporary and it doesn't translate into long-term action.

However, it's not all bad news. If you really want to change society's behavior, psychology has an answer. Instead of trying to change the person you should try to change the context around them.

Psychologists call it channel factors, small but critical factors that makes it easier for a person to engage in a particular behavior.

For example, take a look at organ donation rates among different countries. even though some of these countries are very similar, the donation rates are drastically different. Why is this? Simple.

Austria, Hungary and France have an opt-out system. This means people are automatically organ donors and if they don't want to be they must put in effort to opt-out.

Denmark, Netherlands, UK and Germany, on the other hand, require people to register to become organ donors, so by making it as easy as possible, you can drastically increase donation rates.

Now you might be wondering why Netherlands is a bit higher than the rest its kind? Well, in a massive campaign the government mailed every citizen pleading them to become a donor, yet this was no way near effective as a simple opt-out system, hence, it's better to focus on the context rather than trying to change the individual.

Consider this clever tactic to persuade students to get tetanus shots.

At first researchers tried scaring them with facts like how tetanus causes muscle spasms so strong, they can break your bones, Still, only 3% of people ended up getting vaccinations.

So they tried a different approach. This time the students were given a map of the college and asked: "When will it be convenient for you to get an inoculation?"

They then traced the route from the lecture room to the university clinic where they can get the injection.

This time 28% of students got the vaccination. That's a nine-fold increase. What happened was that by giving them a trace map the researchers made it as easy as possible for the students to get vaccinations. They didn't have to plan anything because it all been done for them.

On the other hand, the scary stories were probably just forgotten in the next lecture.

Overall you can see that activism on social media tries to evoke strong emotions within a person hoping that you'll feel the necessary action for a change, but this just doesn't happen. Instead, it's easier, more effective and sometimes even cheaper to focus on changing the context a person is in and that's how you make an impact upon the world.

---