Young Activists and the Fear of Missing Out

Kania Putri Rahmadiani

With the ease of social media, youths are often bombarded with campaigns, both organic and orchestrated by parties with their own interests. Human rights violations often occur at a massive scale, which calls for drastic measures. In order to raise awareness and demand action, organizations, media, and activists often utilize human rights campaigns to jumpstart a more substantial, extensive effort (Meernik, et al., 2012). Human rights campaigns may take the form of a “tagline”, which looks like it was meant to be treated as a trend, even though it was supposed to be a form of advocacy for marginalized communities.

An argument I often encounter when certain hashtags blow up is that youths, particularly GenZ, are only acting as activists because of their ‘fear of missing out’ (also known as FOMO). As a young activist who spends a lot of her time on social media, I often find myself wanting to participate in the campaigns of various issues due to my friends speaking out on them first. This has motivated me, and a lot of fellow youths, to avoid speaking out due to fear of being called out for doing performative activism based on FOMO. But is having FOMO always a bad thing?

The current state of the world, with ongoing wars, economic decline, and abuse of power happening everywhere, may make it hard for people to see injustice that are way too normalized. Wanting to know more about human rights issues because everyone else is talking about it should not be seen as a negative thing (Newsom and Lengel, 2022). I believe that to not fight for crucial issues that youths genuinely believe in because the fear of being perceived as jumping on the bandwagon is counterproductive for the movement. The same goes to shaming people who are voicing their opinions on human rights issues because they do not seem to know enough or are doing enough.

I believe labelling people and determining who does and does not have the right to speak up against injustice, which often grazes the edges of ageism, classism, and sometimes even racism, is a problem on its own that needs to be addressed. However, in the case of youths being called out doing performative activism, I think that instead, people need to encourage each other to learn more, spread verifiable information, and remind each other that a hashtag goes beyond the trend and is meant to be the start of a movement to make real changes. A simple social media post can raise awareness on issues people may not understand about, and although it needs to be followed by further, more concrete steps, is a good place to start. So is going to protests and starting uncomfortable conversations.

Youths are the ones who will venture out to different fields and make changes in their own rights, therefore it is important to be inclusive to everyone trying to start. To shut down someone’s interest in doing activism by saying they don’t know enough or what they are doing is performative may backfire and stagnate the movement, especially if it’s done by fellow young activists. It shouldn’t matter to question where they got their motivation from, be it from their friend group, a social media tag, or other sources. Solidarity is crucial to start something bigger and we need all the help we can get. Young activists should be treated as equals, no matter their background, and we should encourage each other to contribute to human rights and peace work. For that reason, I would like to encourage myself and fellow young activists to have more FOMO when it comes to human rights issues and do the little things that seem unimportant because it all needs to start somewhere.

References:

Cervi, Laura and Carles Marin-Llado. “Freepalestine on TikTok: From Performative Activism to (Meaningful) Playful Activism.” Journal of International and Intercultural Communication 15, no. 4 (2022): 414-434.

Meernik, James, Rosa Aloisi, Marsha Sowell, and Angela Nichols. “The Impact of Human Rights Organizations on Naming and Shaming Campaigns.” Journal of Conflict Resolution 56, no. 2 (2012): 233-256.

Newsom, Victoria A. and Lara Martin Lengel, eds. Embodied Activisms: Performative Expressions of Political and Social Action. Lanham: The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, 2022.