Alana Reibstein

Shortly after the earthquake struck in Haiti, I signed onto Facebook and was instantaneously bombarded by dozens of requests to join groups about this and that. Before perfunctorily clicking “ignore” like I always do, I took a minute to examine the groups a bit more closely. Most seemed to be about helping the Haitians, each claiming that if I joined, I would be donating money to relief efforts, or someone on my behalf would be donating that money.

I couldn’t help but think, “It’s for a cause, I guess that means it’s my moral obligation to join.” However, after pondering further, I wondered about the legitimacy of these groups. Do I really want to support the cause in this way?

And soon enough, I ignored the requests. Efforts like these to help those in Haiti, who have probably never seen Facebook, are misguided and, unfortunately, too often fabricated. Efforts like these, like those in which people are trying to “help” support for breast cancer and “stop” global warming, are futile and exhausted. In this age of technology, one of the most effective ways of getting people’s attention for a cause is through use of a computer or cell phone. However, this predominant way that teenagers contribute today is really undermining more effective awareness programs and the integrity of charity in general.

Advertisements to help Haiti through Facebook de-legitimize the importance of the cause. Students will feel like they’ve done their part just by clicking “join” on Facebook, so when asked in person to help the cause in a more tangible way, they may deny because they feel that they’ve already made a difference.

            I’m sure that the phrase “we will donate $0.001 to Haiti for every fan of this page” has overwhelmed the majority of MHS students’ “newsfeeds” in the past couple of weeks, but this, sadly, means nothing.

The first problem is, who is the “we” that is donating this money on behalf of Facebook “fans”? Are they taking the money right out of their pockets? These pages never provide an explanation. Becoming a “fan” of this page on Facebook does not require any personal information such as a credit card number and does not clarify what money is going where. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that you’ve fulfilled your responsibility by joining this group. To retort by saying, “I trust that whoever made this page will donate out of the goodness of his heart” or something of that nature is inane, and emphasizes teenagers’ lack of ability to discern real from fake, helpful from useless.

I’m not suggesting that everyone is expected to send a check to Haiti, nor am I saying that in order to help you need to give a considerable amount of money. In fact, I believe that it is great if you text a number thus donating just ten dollars, because this is a largely run, well planned out means of charity, where your own money is spent and charged to your own cell phone bill. Mass media can be a viable and brilliant source for charity organizations to raise money to support the travesty occurring in Haiti, or elsewhere, but we cannot let ourselves be duped by some Joe Shmo who made a Facebook group promising to send money. This simply does not suffice.

Another problem with these pages is that they often seem like they were created just for recognition purposes, leading to competition with several other Haitian-support-related pages. For example, the creator of one “fan page” even posted this on his site: “COME ON PEOPLE!!!!! 2 DAYS AND ONLY 650 FANS?!?!?!? THE OTHER HAITI PAGE HAD 500,000 IN TWO DAYS!!! PLEASE SUGGEST!!!” This illustrates part of the mindset behind the operators of these pages—to have as many fans as possible for their ownpages – not just because they want to help those in Haiti. If the latter was their reasoning, then they would encourage the other Haiti pages to be popular as well. These creators treat the disaster as a race to get the most people to support their page over another person’s, while neither does anything useful to actually help. The motivation for a surplus of fans is a surplus of recognition and bragging rights. With a similar mentality, there exists another group titled, “For everyone that joins I might donate $0.001 to Haiti. Every penny counts!” Key word: might.

            In early January, a Facebook user spawned another misguided attempt to be charitable. This time it was to spread breast cancer awareness. A message was sent around requesting girls to make their statuses their bra color. The message stated that this way “it will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.” Thus, spreading awareness.

However well intentioned the author may be, the message led to what could be seen an as anything but appropriate discussion on girls’ statuses, and it once again turned into some kind of game or competition, like the Haiti relief efforts. People were no longer thinking about the cause itself, but were more concerned of how others would judge their color, and the conversations written by way of “comments” and “likes” below it. With a disease that puts so many lives at risk, it is nothing to be taken lightly. Better ways to portray awareness exist and are used all over, like wearing a pink ribbon or going on a breast cancer walk.

            Global warming is another issue. Any article of clothing or any jewelry or bag that has one of the phrases, “go green,” “save planet earth,” “global warming is not cool,” etc. on it, has become a fashion fad. Buying a bag made entirely organically is great and does help the cause. However, this often leads teenagers to compete for recognition—to be the “green-est.” It takes their mind off of the original reason why they should be purchasing these items. These efforts to help global warming are not efforts to save the world, yet are efforts to gain people’s admiration for supposedly wanting to help.

Buying things such as the ever so popular Sigg brand water bottles does in fact help the environment. They are metal, therefore re-usable, so you’re not throwing out a new plastic bottle every day. But when people own more of them than necessary, I wonder whether it’s almost as wasteful as a plastic bottle. There are even those who will walk around with a Sigg, promoting their “eco-friendliness”, yet will drop a gum wrapper outdoors and not bother to pick it up.

We live in a world with rapid advancements taking shape in every form of our society. We have the right intentions, but sometimes it’s difficult not to take advantage of these means and use them to benefit ourselves. Let’s stick to the main premise of charities and awareness organizations: to help others, not ourselves.