SOCIAL MEDIA MOBILIZING YOUTH ACTIVISM

The shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 paved the way for activism controlled by youth led by key students banding together following the incident. Student activists from the school emerged particularly via social media and organized large-scale efforts in order to create discourse surrounding gun control through their March For Our Lives movement. Studying the overlap between youth activism, the response to trauma, the systems at play within social media, and the role of commercialization, this paper dives into the complexities of activist based discourse as it evolves and the forces at play within youth activism in general. Looking at these existing efforts aids in exposing both the pros and cons of activism mediated by social media and the role that larger systems play in an activist’s mission.