ESSAY: THE ICE BUCKET CHALLENGE AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Writing from London, MAL FLETCHER takes a critical look at the ice bucket challenge and the role social media has played in its viral nature…

London

The ice bucket challenge has become a subject of not-so-icy debate in sections of the British media and press. 

Is it a colossal waste of time – and water – or a genuine attempt to raise money and awareness about debilitating diseases?

The ice bucket challenge started life in the US, as a way of raising much-needed funds for research into a form of motor neurone disease. This disease weakens many of the muscles in the human body by changing the way the brains sends messages to them.

Once the challenge went viral via social media, however, charities representing other causes also became involved, including the MacMillan Cancer Support group in the UK. At one point, some of the original recipients of peoples’ giving expressed annoyance that their funding was being diverted to these other causes.

The challenge demonstrates two things in particular. The first is peoples’ willingness, even in relatively austere times, to invest in worthy causes, often in imaginative ways. So far it has raised £250,000 for the UK Motor Neurone Disease Association and £37.7 million for its equivalent organisation in the US (editor’s note – in Australia, the ice bucket challenge is also raising money for MND charities).

The challenge also reflects the power of social media and how central they have become, in a very short space of time, to how we spread ideas and news.

Social media often play upon our capacity for social acculturation – or what we normally refer to as peer pressure. This is especially true of the visual social media. (It’s hard to imagine the ice bucket challenge catching on had it been carried forward in written sentences, a la Twitter.)

Because we’re social beings, we take many of our cues for behaviour – even unconsciously – from the social groups to which we belong.

Taking up the ice bucket challenge is a conscious response to a gentle form of peer group pressure, as one member challenges another to take part.

Within that, however, lies a potential danger – specifically, that we will eventually forget the cause behind the craze, so that we end up participating in a bizarre ritual without any real awareness as to why we’re doing it.

Even now, many more people are talking more about ice buckets than motor neurone disease or cancer.

For a minority of people, particularly younger people, there are other latent pitfalls with this type of social media trend. There is, for example, the potential for taking things too far in a kind of internet one-upmanship.

This week The Times carried a report about an 18-year-old man in Scotland who drowned after diving into a disused quarry filled with water. It’s believed he was taking part in the ice bucket challenge just before he drowned.

The trend was also hit by tragedy last week when 27 year-old Corey Griffin, one of its inventors, drowned in a swimming accident in the US. His death has been directly linked to the ice bucket challenge.

Recognising the potential for empty exhibitionism, some people are responding to the challenge by choosing to ‘pay-it-on’.

We first saw this kind of response emerge during the much more dangerous fad known as neknominating, which involved people drinking large quantities of alcohol and challenging others to do the same. This, too, was promoted using social media.

Some people, perhaps in a defiant statement of their independence of thought, chose to forego the proscribed challenge activity and simply gave their time or money to a charity of their choice.

The result, as far as the charities were concerned, was the same.

Arguably we’re all show-offs at some level, but with anything as viral and visual as the ice bucket challenge there’s always the possibility that we’ll become distracted by the hoopla and lose sight of the goal.

Perhaps before any of us takes part in something like this, we need to pause for breath. We may need to ask whether or not this representsthe best way for us to take part in raising funds and awareness.

If we’re going to dump iced water on our heads, we should move forward with our eyes on the goal, as many have undoubtedly done, rather than indulging in empty exhibitionism.

Mal Fletcher is a speaker, author, broadcaster and the founder/director of Next Wave International, a Christian mission to contemporary cultures with a special focus on Europe, and EDGES TV. Follow Mal’s daily comment at twitter.com/malfletcher. Mal Fletcher’s latest book Fascinating Times is available now.

Reproduced with permission from www.2020plus.net. Copyright Mal Fletcher 2014.