Making a Difference in a Digital World

In the current state of the world, it feels easy to become overwhelmed by the amount of information we obtain surrounding climate change, environmental damage, and outstanding pollution levels. A lot of this information might even be observed through social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram, or Twitter. According to a Synthesio report, over 60 million mentions of climate change have occurred all over the world on various social media platforms over the past 12 months. In the United States alone, there were 12 million posts mentioning climate change in the last year. These reports came from all types of profiles including celebrities, brands, politicians, etc. With this type of attention from popular sources, the conversation surrounding climate change and the environment can gain a rapid following within a short amount of time. However, there aren’t always solutions being provided with each of these mentions, leading to a gap between the amount of awareness and amount of action being taken to resolve environmental devastation.

In order to create change, platforms can provide solutions for the climate crisis along with raising awareness. When individuals work to reduce their personal “carbon footprint”, or the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced by humans, they can create a positive change for the environment. This is especially true when we observe human social behavior. People are prone to following the norms or behaviors that are believed to be common amongst their peers, making certain actions contagious within communities as people are driven to conform to societal standards. Of course, social media plays a large role in this concept of conformity as large groups of people come together to participate in all types of trends. Some of these trends might involve fashion, dances, popular audios, jokes, or even AI.

When individuals come together to engage in something larger than themselves, amazing things can occur. For example, people fought to end women’s suffrage in the early 20th century, people came together to spread the importance of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, and there have been important courses of action in the environmental scene such as The Green Belt Movement, where people planted millions of trees across Kenya in the late ‘70s. Small movements can be witnessed every day across social media platforms like TikTok, where people conform to the ideas of popular influencers, follow viral challenges, and gain emotional attachment to the people and stories they find on their page.

An influencer, or “a person who is able to generate interest in something (such as a consumer product) by posting about it on social media”, can sway the public opinion based on trust and relationships with their audience. This is a highly valuable skill when it comes to marketing ideas or products to a large community. For environmentalism, influencers who support positive impacts on the environment could persuade their target audience to follow their lead and practice sustainable activism.

In the U.S., short-term commodities like fashion and beauty products are promoted on social media all the time, with TikTok raising beauty product sales by 22% in 2024 and influencing 55% of impulse purchases in 2022. These short-term products will most likely lead to significant waste generation as impulse purchases are usually discarded quickly after buying. Each year, the fashion industry generates over 17 million tons of textile waste, with consumers discarding 11.3 million tons of clothing annually. This contributes significantly to overall waste. Additionally, the beauty industry produces over 120 billion packaging units annually, further exacerbating environmental pollution.

Clearly, social media has the ability to influence waste generation, affecting climate change and overall environmental wellness. This data proves that people will act on what they see from the people they trust. Social media has started to act as a sort of mine field for over-consumers, with individual social media users in the U.S. seeing an average of 36 ads per day across various platforms. If there were more promotions or advertisements from influencers focused on how to practice sustainable methods of consumerism, we might see different, more positive outcomes for the amount of waste produced by these general areas of consumption via social media. When people are too focused on material things, they can lose sight of what generates lasting happiness. Studies show that people with materialistic mindsets in the U.S. have lower levels of life satisfaction and greater chances of depression, while those who focus on what is truly important in life and practice minimalism experience greater overall happiness.

If large audiences came together to make environmentalism trendy and popular, the world would experience great adaptations to make life more eco-oriented as companies would be forced to comply with consumer demands, policies would be oriented towards environmental healing, consumers would change their behaviors to be more environmentally responsible, communities would come together, and new and exciting solutions would erupt to create a healthier planet. Small World intends to shift the mindset of the majority of consumers and bring a spotlight to the companies that practice sustainable and eco-friendly methods of production. By doing this, we can create a world of consumerism that we feel proud to be a part of.