Digital Performance Activism Amongst High Schoolers - Caused by Laziness or Conformity?

Abstract

An increasingly popular trend in today’s digital age has been the use of social media to garner greater support for social change. While activism itself is beneficial, there is a harmful derivative known as performance activism. This phenomenon occurs when an individual supports a cause to elevate their social clout, rather than being devoted to the issue. Consequently, surface-level activism arises and the problem at hand isn’t actually solved. Since existing research has explored the effects of performance activism (especially among adults), this study scrutinizes the causes of performance activism amidst teenagers. The hypothesis of this research is that high schoolers’ engagement in digital performance activism is primarily a result of lacking the time, because students are genuinely interested in civic engagement, but do not have (or make) time to act upon it. Through a mixed-methods survey design and random cluster sampling of over 300 Bay Area high school students, it is concluded that a lack of time is the primary cause of performance activism in the youth. This study contributes to the current state of research by optimizing high schoolers’ social media usage to promote efficient activism, altering how companies advertise their humanitarian efforts to the youth, and serving as a didactic way to maximize societal impact while minimizing the individual’s cost of contributing. Furthermore, this research serves as a stepping stone to future studies pertaining to youth conformity, activism, and social media.