Simply Shreya: for the sake of it

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Morgan Kong

Wingspan’s Shreya Jagan shares her personal take on issues and experiences in her weekly column Simply Shreya.

Shreya Jagan, Staff Reporter

Do we create more of a commotion than we create change?

Our generation today is very much based off of advocating and raising awareness and while that’s fully supported, we unfortunately take advantage of our right to free speech while forgoing the good we could be doing.

If something tragic happens, countless people immediately take to Instagram or Twitter or Facebook to offer their condolences. I can see the caring and loving side to these posts but I also notice how repetitive and unnecessary it is.

We have the ability to experience emotions without having to let the whole world know how we feel. 

Some things are better left personal. I simply believe that change and actions speak more volume than a hashtag on a social media post.

Media today publicizes everything. Everyday, innuendos are constantly brought up on television shows. Everyday, memes are created in the hopes of making jokes out of a very serious matter. 

A very popular show, Modern Family, used a joke in one of their episodes which I found very insensitive and as their unsuccessful attempt at bringing light to a very heartbreaking crisis. Two of the main characters are forced to do chores and they tell their dad that they haven’t eaten yet. Their dad reverts by saying “neither have half the kids in Africa”. Yes, they’re acknowledging the fact that children in Africa are suffering but what is that side comment going to achieve?

See, that’s the problem. We all strive to make ourselves aware of current issues in this demanding world, but that’s as far as we go. For something to really matter, people have to want it to matter. You can bandwagon and retweet and repost all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that there is still a problem. Doing all of those things doesn’t make the problem disappear. It doesn’t make things better. The only thing it does is spread the word. 

There’s no significance to anything we do if we lay back and relax as soon as our finger hits the word send on a screen.

Why are we making noise just for the sake of making noise when we should be making noise for the sake of making a difference?