Ignorant or silently informed?

Rarely do I post about current affairs. Instead, you’ll be exposed to the amateur shenanigans my friends and I engage in. However, recently, after seeing many of my friends use their platform to raise awareness, I’ve been feeling guilty for remaining silently informed, and I feel like I’m being judged because of it. However, I think this beast of judgment is very necessary, and so too is the guilt, as I believe this guilt and judgment streamline positive outcomes. 

However, I don’t think remaining silently informed is by any means wrong. You don't need to publicly display inquisitiveness to feel sympathy for those suffering in developing nations or think about the world with a deeper perspective, all you need to do is consume the news. According to Schäfer and Schemer, the consumption of political news provides us with the information required to participate in elections and activism effectively. 

That said, even if you aren’t completely versed in a topic, I think there’s no harm in using your platform to share current affairs. The world would be a better place if the uninterested became unintentionally informed. 

Then again, I do believe knowing is enough. When we acknowledge distant tragedy, we are also recognising our Western privilege. However, if you're extraverted enough and certain that what we know should be known by everyone, then why not share that information with whoever is willing to listen? After all, we should all be able to enjoy life's small pleasures, like a hot coffee on a cold Sunday morning, because the big things wouldn't be big if they happened consistently. 

Ignorance isn’t bliss 

If being well-informed makes us more self-aware, wouldn't the benefits of acquiring knowledge debunk the saying 'ignorance is bliss'? Global awareness allows us to measure first-world problems on a scale of tragedy, preventing us from winging about small inconveniences. Therefore, my interpretation is the exact opposite of what the saying alludes – knowledge is more blissful than ignorance. So, maybe you've been fooling yourself all this time.  

Thankfully, there are many assertive people with Instagram accounts, many of whom use their platform to raise awareness, doing the world justice and making me feel guilty in the process. Sometimes, I find that the people I follow inform me before I muster up the initiative to read the news. In fact, it's likely that if you open your Instagram now and scroll through your stories’ you’ll be exposed to some news outside of your physical geography. If not, it must be a bad news day... or a good news day, depending on how you look at it.  

You should feel guilty…  

Exhausted, my friend and I sunk into the living room couch and doomscrolled. Within the brain rot to which I was exposed was some important information about the state of the world. This information, however, was shared by a particularly niche group of people – a group of social warriors who never fail to make me feel guilty. To counteract the guilt brewing in my stomach, I reacted with a sigh and thought that the person must be living a miserable existence. Frustrated by guilt and violence, I complained to my friend, telling him that I wanted to write an article about how ignorance and silence are seen as the same but are completely different.  

I was determined to prove my point. However, when I finally started writing, I quickly realised that my argument was out of touch. I deleted whatever nonsense I had written and started over, tackling the blank canvas with a fresh perspective. 

Remaining silent  

The more I discover about the world the more I want to protect it. Inaction is a large part of why I feel so guilty, spending countless hours thinking about how I can best use my skills to improve the state of the world without doing anything important. Take a career objective for instance, we all have one, and we all know there are actions we can take to achieve it. Yet, much of the time we tend to trade progress for comfort (I know I do), watching our friends and colleagues achieve our goals while we remain complacent. However, unlike other forms of guilt, this guilt is unique, it’s positive, and it fuels the tank of motivation that makes us strive to be better. It’s almost the equivalent of watching a motivational video, a stimulus of encouragement edging you towards doing that one thing you don’t want to but know you should. The point is, that without Instagram's social warriors, we would feel far less positive guilt than we should.

Motivation  

Be honest with yourself, when it comes to sharing current affairs online, raising awareness is only one component in a much larger strategy. We inform our Instagram followers about global tragedy not only because we feel sympathy for the victims of it, but because it benefits our reputation. Through informing, we are altering the way outsiders perceive us, creating an attractive, assertive and well-educated identity for ourselves - we all want to be known as that smart friend. That said, according to findings uncovered by Dr Adrian Ward, Dr Jianqing Zheng and Dr Susan M. Broniarczyk from the University of Texas, a lot of what is shared is only partially understood by the person who shares it… this report puts this theory to the test, and what they discovered may shock you. 

The doctors surveyed a group of 43 males and discovered that only 28 per cent of them read the full length of each article’ they shared on Facebook. Next, they interviewed a separate group of 99 males and found that most placed knowledge sharing and news consumption in the same theoretical box – intellect. Now, I can see how not being entirely versed on a subject before promoting either for or against it can be interpreted as unethical. However, depending on what current affair you're sharing and whether you've consumed enough context to make an informed opinion, I'm not totally against it. You're informing the uninterested regardless. 

“One’s self-assurance in his or her emotional knowledge can be a powerful means to motivate behaviour that is consistent with the goals of the individual”  

I pulled this quote from a 2008 essay by Dr. Blair Kidwell, a marketing professor at the University of North Texas. It perfectly encapsulates the type of guilt I’ve been trying to articulate.

Although the context in which this statement was written is very different to what I am discussing in this article, as Kidwell was applying his theory to eating habits, the statement’s theory can still be used to support my argument. For instance, someone with great emotional intelligence should be able to recognise not only how fear of inaction to share news and social pressure can result in a feeling of guilt, but also strategies to eradicate that feeling and why those strategies work. This is called understanding your emotions, or as Kidwell says, emotional confidence. 

Why do we share?  

Have you ever found yourself engaged in a meaningful conversation with someone unexpected? If your answer is yes, let me ask you this, what originally made you assume that person's intellect?

We make assumptions about people based on their job titles, associates, economic status physical characteristics, and you guessed it, social media profiles. However, unlike the rest of the categories listed, social media is the only one we can manipulate in a matter of seconds. If we're unhappy about our physical person, why not create a new persona online? Interestingly, we can also use social media to reveal our true identity, as for some, revealing information about our passions, interests, concerns and hobbies can be easier when the physical component is removed.

In a way, social media allows us to break free from the stereotypes created by society. We can use it to disassociate ourselves from our occupation, creating a new identity through the personality we share online. 

‘People are more likely to internalise displayed personality traits into perceptions of their “true selves” when their actions are public than they are private.’- Adrian Ward 

While online social activists unintentionally brew positive guilt in our stomachs, driving us to share important, relevant and meaningful current affairs across our social media platforms, we can’t deny that through sharing this content we are simultaneously building a rose-tinted reputation for ourselves. After all, society can’t create perceptions about us if we keep our actions private.  

The things I complain about in my lovely corner of the world are largely insignificant. On a global scale, reality is undeniably miserable, however, the segment I occupy isn't. My life isn’t perfect, but the opportunities I have are far greater than the opportunities of those living in developing countries.  

So, when I'm unwillingly exposed to heartbreaking foreign affairs on my daily doom scroll, I can’t help but feel guilty, not only for my lifestyle but also for my inaction. The guilt makes me want to do better, to strive a little harder so I can rely on my initiative to be informed rather than a niche group of Instagram friends. 

Finally, I want to remind you of two points: the right to remain silent and positive guilt.  

Firstly, when it comes to current affairs, being silently informed I think is fine – knowledge doesn’t magically become powerful once you share it on social media. Secondly, not all guilt is negative. In fact, if channelled correctly, guilt can catalyse productivity. It’s like feedback for an essay, if you choose to acknowledge it, the next essay you write will be an improvement.  

Therefore, next time you’re doomscrolling, instead of bypassing the news like an unattractive Hinge profile, acknowledge it. Engage with the information, if you're more confident than I am you might even share it. It doesn't matter if you're not an expert, if you're extraverted enough, why not be the social warrior that people love to hate but secretly wish to be? After all, there's a certain courage in being disliked.