Performative Politics

I opened Instagram last year to see the wave of online posting surrounding the ongoing ICE raids and immigration crackdowns, seeing the exact same infographic on almost everyone's stories. Different accounts with the same slides, same calls to action, and same dramatic color schemes. By the end of the day, it felt like just about everyone had reposted it. However, if you asked what actually changed because of these reposts, the answer would probably be: hardly anything.  

This is an experience I can guarantee many of us have had. Across our generation, politics has quickly turned into something we perform rather than something we practice. We repost, we share, we comment, and then we close the app and move on with our lives. It looks like engagement and feels like participation, but most of the time, it stops there. 

Social media has made political expression incredibly easy. On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, it takes mere moments to align yourself with a cause. To be clear, awareness is incredibly important. But awareness without action can become an illusion that convinces us we’ve done something meaningful, when in truth, we haven’t. Creating a false sense of accomplishment, we leave the app feeling like crusaders for justice, while the conditions of the causes we claim to support remain unchanged.

Some might argue that online activism is a starting point, and that posts on social media can inspire real-world action. And occasionally, that's true. #MeToo, Black Lives Matter, and Fridays for Future are movements that illustrate how digital organizing can translate into tangible change. But realistically, most of the time, online discourse doesn’t go further. If we want to take civic engagement seriously, we have to ask ourselves an uncomfortable question: are we participating in democracy, or just performing it? For most of us, the answer is probably somewhere in between, which is okay. Awareness is a great starting point, but it can’t be the end goal. 

There is an underlying pressure that comes with this—when everyone is posting about an issue, not posting leads people to assume you don’t care. People repost about issues they don’t fully understand, or haven’t taken time to look into, just to avoid being seen as indifferent, which is where conformism gets particularly damaging. When content spreads based on social pressure instead of understanding, misinformation travels just as fast as accurate information, or sometimes faster. A person who engages with content they don’t fully understand is actively contributing to a culture where appearing informed is more important than being informed. We become curators of a political identity rather than members of a political reality.

Shifting from the view that students don't care to informing them of the impact that they can have is far more productive than simply viewing and judging. The challenge we face is that our generation’s version of civic engagement prioritizes visibility over impact. It rewards quick reactions and reposts instead of sustained effort and knowledge. Because social media quantifies engagement immediately with likes, comments, and reposts as visible metrics of impact, it can feel effective when it really isn’t. The algorithm rewards the loudest and fastest take, not the most nuanced or researched one. In other words, we are being trained to react at the speed of a scroll, which fundamentally contrasts with the slow, deliberate work of real legislative and social change.

Meanwhile, the forms of engagement that actually impact communities are becoming increasingly invisible. Attending a local city council meeting, signing petitions, volunteering consistently, or even having difficult and informed conversations—none of these actions come with instant reactions or recognition. Though they are less convenient and sometimes uncomfortable, these are the actions that bring actual change.

So the next time you go to repost something political, ask yourself what the next step looks like beyond the screen. Don’t let that question slow you down—let it push you further. When we trade performance for practice, we realize that we have the tools to reshape our world. And that kind of action will always matter more than a reposted TikTok.