Remember the hyped Ice Bucket Challenge which became one of the hottest topic in social media last year? The Ice Bucket Challenge, or also known as ALS Ice Bucket Challenge is an activity in which people dumps a bucket of ice water on someone’s head in order to promote awareness of the diseases ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and encourage donations to research about the disease. The activity might seem silly, but, it went viral on social media and we saw many celebrities such as Chris Pratt, Jennifer Lopez, Justin Timberlake, Lil Wayne, even high-ranking entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg joining the hype of ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. According to Mashable, more than 15 million people have joined in on the conversation about the Ice Bucket Challenge on Facebook and 1,2 million Ice Bucket Challenge videos has been uploaded to Facebook alone.
What we are witnessing here wasn’t only random activity that went viral on social media. It wasn’t only for fun; it wasn’t something like Gangnam Style or Harlem Shake. The core idea of this activity is to rally people, to grasp people attention about the disease and encourage people to donate to ALS research. Needless to say, not only the campaign went viral, it was also successful in achieving its’ objective to gather people’s support through social media.
Social media has change how the world communicate to each other. With the arrival of social media, advocacy efforts have been amplified because words travel as fast as the click of the hand through social media. It reaches more people in a faster and larger way than it has ever been before. Though some people sees social media as a nuisance and place where people dumps unnecessary information, social media can also be used for something greater. After all, social media is just a platform and what matters is how we use the platform. Social media has made it possible to enhance the message that we really need to hear whether it’s about poverty, environment, and many other social issues.
ALS Ice Bucket Challenge isn’t the only evidence that social media is not only a platform for advertising or personal sharing. There are also several well-known campaign such as Make-A-Wish’s #SFBatKid and The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.
So, how could we change the world through social media? Well, see the bigger purpose of it, see social media as a platform. And what matters the most is how we, as a user, utilized social media to do something greater for the society. But of course, social media alone isn’t enough to change the world. Asides from advocating the causes that we’d believe in through social media, we need to do the real work also. Spread goodness, see the bigger purpose in everything.
