What does it mean to tweet? For Gary Lineker, it means being a little more comfortable with himself. Speaking at Hay Festival, Lineker said he tweets about politics not “to try and influence” but rather “to be able to express my opinion”. [himself] “Myself reflected in the mirror at night”
Lineker is over 40 years older than me, and in his comments he alluded to a problem that goes to the very heart of my generation's social media activism: we don't post things online because we think there will be clear consequences, we post because we have a larger moral motivation to speak out about an issue and be “right” about it, whether or not it concerns us or we're familiar with it.
I'm 20 years old and fully part of Gen Z. During the first lockdown, my GCSEs were cancelled so I played online games and talked to my classmates on Discord. But through social media, my friends and I all felt a visceral affinity to the protests that swept American cities after the brutal police killing of George Floyd in 2020.
Social media has made it easier than ever to follow happenings around the world in real time and share our opinions. As a result, my colleagues and I feel like our Instagram feeds need to be filled with a constant stream of political “hot takes” about domestic and international affairs.
We share slogans, Instagram posts, black boxes (in support of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement), AI-generated images of Rapha and run-of-the-mill infographics. The reward? A feedback loop of heart “responses” and supportive comments, and never-ending validation in the form of retweets and likes.
If you could quickly quote-tweet someone who was obviously “wrong,” you might be able to “ratio-blow” them — in other words, get more likes and engagement on your post than the quote-tweeter — the biggest dopamine hit of the lockdown era.
A clever 280-character reply (or a lengthy essay for those who've paid for the new X-Premium) is not only a way to feel popular, but also a way to feel like you're making a real difference in the world.
If you're one of the 46 million people who retweeted or reposted the #AllEyesOnRafah hashtag in the past few days, you've become — or at least can think of it as — an activist who can help stop Israel's ongoing war in Palestine.
In defence of my generation, the fact that more and more people are concerned about issues like abortion bans in the US and the impact of austerity in the UK over the past 14 years disproves the old criticism that all young people are apolitical.
Platforms like X (formerly Twitter) also allow you to hear the opinions of experts directly and make your own judgment on important issues. However, it cannot be denied that there is a lot of pressure to always say the “right” thing. Not having the right opinion, not fully understanding a very complex debate that has been going on for decades, or simply remaining silent about something can have serious consequences. These days, it is not uncommon for friendships to break down over differences in political opinions.
Take Theo Baker, a student journalist at Stanford University in California who is about the same age as me. Earlier this year, Baker wrote an op-ed for The Atlantic about how Stanford had become a “factory of injustice” in the wake of the October 7 Hamas attacks.
He argued that the Hamas attacks should have been condemned by both the university administration and students, but were not, and that some elements of the pro-Palestinian response had led to anti-Semitism on campus and a difficult environment for Jewish students.
Baker attributes this to the nature of students who attend elite universities and the fact that they[embrace] He, like me, is clearly critical of the idea that being a good person is “as easy as reposting an infographic,” an idea that's become common among our generation.
But just a few months later, Baker was quick to pass moral judgment on a professor who tweeted critically about his father, a reporter for The New York Times. Baker Jr. wrote in his own tweet that the professor's tweets were “better than tweeting stuff like this.” This dilemma proves difficult to escape for people my age.
Baker has since deleted the tweet and apologized in an email, but the internet and social media mean his rash judgments will live on forever — and considering how strongly Gen Z feels about being on the “right side of history,” you can imagine the pressures that such permanence creates.
Until the BBC decides that Gary Lineker’s political tweets violate their guidelines, he will continue to post his thoughts, but one has to wonder why Lineker and my generation feel the need to use social media to clear their consciences, and whether this dynamic is making X more harmful.
