If you are actively using Facebook, by now you have certainly seen some (if not many) of your friends change their default pictures to an image of a cartoon.
If it wasn’t explained why, and you were curious – I’m sure you inquired and found out. But a lot of people still don’t understand why — which is one of the reasons I question it in the first place.
The explanation attached to the profile picture change is something to the likes of “Change your picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on Facebook until Monday, December 6th. Join the fight against child abuse & copy & paste to your status to invite your friends to do the same.”
In the early stages of all of this happening, I would get annoyed each time I saw it — but not really think too much about it. But when I saw my brother Faraz post “If you know a child is being abused, please call 1-800-4-A-CHILD instead of just changing your profile picture to a cartoon” I immediately smiled and thought THIS is something I could go along with and promote. Instead of belittling what is a serious problem in the United States and across the globe, this was good information that should be passed along.
My number one question or problem with the cartoon scenario is: does the problem or at least the severity of the problem that is child abuse suddenly disappear after December 6th?
I’m sure many of the people who changed their Facebook profile photo thought that by doing so, they were promoting a good cause… but most didn’t even bother explaining the reason they were changing their photo in the first place. Instead of passively participating, we should all take an active stance.
Over the last twelve hours or so, I’m pleased to see several of my Facebook “friends” change their statuses to what my brother wrote and I urge you to do the same.
This whole thing reminded me of a little while back when females posted on their Facebook statuses where they “liked it” in order to promote breast cancer. It was supposed to imply where they liked to leave their purses, but it became so racy and provocative and I don’t think it raised any awareness at all. Breast Cancer is the number one cause of death for females, and to undermine its severity just baffles me each time.
What cause will be next?
Instead, why not provide people with information? Or provide links to where people can donate to for further research and prevention. Wouldn’t it be amazing if both of these problems became a thing of the past?
There are many pros and cons to social media. You can use them to promote great causes like child abuse and cancer amongst many others, but there is a way to do it. The growing trend unfortunately is that social media just desensitizes us more and more.
P.S. Don’t forget to leave me a comment below on your thoughts! As always, I’d love to hear from you.
Hi Summaiyah -<br />Thanks for sharing your post with me on twitter. I applaud you and your brother Faraz for seeing the deeper meaning to the issue and for making a tangible difference! <br /><br />Thank you for being part of REAL change!<br /><br />:) Melissa
Well put! It doesn't take much for people to "follow the crowd" and do what "all the cool kids are doing". But the thing that irks me is that no one wants to look at the bigger picture – and really just take a moment and think about how scary the situation really is. I think there would be a lot more stability in our society if we all chose to be just a little more wiser.
i agree with ur thoughts..just changing the profile pic is a strange way to condemn this. It would be better to create awareness as u said rather than changing the pic to a cartoon..we just follow the crowd without thinking..
Thanks.<br />I agree, most people are so used to conforming and going along with the crowd that its ridiculous.