"This year, I had to admit something uncomfortable: The work I once called "advocacy" on social media no longer felt effective. For more than five years-beginning in the early days of COVID-19-I slowly built what some might call a sizable online presence. As my accounts grew, so did my comfort speaking publicly about difficult but important socio-political issues: feminism, racism, political unrest, and the role politics plays in our lives. I was busy."
"This year, after stepping back from online advocacy and taking a part-time faculty position at my local university, I was forced to confront a difficult realization: The work I had been doing online felt far less impactful than the work I was now doing in a classroom. The difference had nothing to do with passion or effort. It had everything to do with structure."
Online advocacy can generate high engagement and visibility while producing little measurable impact. Platform designs reward attention and displays of certainty, which undermines deliberation, nuance, and learning. Structured communal spaces such as classrooms enable repeated interaction, relationship-building, reflection, and practice, creating conditions more conducive to learning and behavioral change. Community-based work often yields deeper, more sustained influence than online visibility alone. Metrics like views and likes act as proxies rather than evidence of real change. Psychological perspectives interpret engagement numbers as indicators of reach, not as proof of effectiveness, highlighting the importance of structure for translating influence into change.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]