How to Use Social Networks

Online social networks are the superglue of Millennial activism. One leading marketing expert says, “We think that the single largest differentiator in this generation from previous generations is the social network that is people’s lives, the part of it that technology enables.”

Of course, social networks aren’t new. Humans have always nestled within familiar social boundaries, but new technologies have made such interconnections more visible, accessible, and widely distributed. Millennials use social networking websites to link to news articles, songs, and videos. They go online to announce events and organize people offline—across town, in another state, even on the other side of the world.

One example of Millennials’ online activism is Causes on Facebook. In the spring of 2007, Project Agape posted its “Causes” application on Facebook. Within six months, more than 30,000 Causes were created on the social networking site, supporting over 12,000 existing nonprofit organizations.

Little of this, however, is considered a plea for personal attention. It is an expression of self. Trabian Shorters at the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation asserts that the transparency associated with online social networks allows young people to “acknowledge their own existence.”

This idea is echoed by Duke University student Julia Torti in the University’s newspaper: “Posting on Facebook is not an appeal to authority; rather, it circumvents anyone in a position of power. We’re speaking directly to our peers, oftentimes not pushing a specific political agenda but instead sharing information that we think is important.”

Millennials are drawn to online social communities because they are shut out of public life in many ways. As a result, online social networks are popping up across all segments of society, geography, causes, and ideologies, and they basically divide into two types. There are general social networking sites, such as Facebook and MySpace, where participants use their everyday networks to share information about causes in the same way that they share information about their love lives, school, and parents.

And there are social networking sites exclusively focused on activism, such as Change.org and Razoo. None of these sites are the absolute purview of Millennials any longer, but each has within it the culture of transparency and connectedness initiated by young people.

One example of Millennials’ online activism is Causes on Facebook. In the spring of 2007, Project Agape posted its “Causes” application on Facebook. Within six months, more than 30,000 Causes were created on the social networking site, supporting over 12,000 existing nonprofit organizations.

A brief survey of Causes on Facebook reveals an array of mainstream, apple-pie efforts, typical of Millennial activism. They are more practical than poetic, more passionate and less ideological in their activism efforts. Few could argue with the worthiness of helping orphans in China, trying to find a cure for AIDS and ALS, eradicating breast cancer, and helping underprivileged children learn to read.

However, the Causes application is different from traditional approaches because users are drawn to the cause first, then the institution (or group of volunteers if no formal institution exists). Joe Green, CEO of Causes on Facebook, describes the network interaction for causes this way: “There could be 1,000 causes aiming to help SaveDarfur.org with lots of different leaders and networks and lots of people reaching out in many ways.”