The Role of Social Media: How Does Environmental Stewardship Take Off?

There is no denying the impact that social media networks have had in connecting people all over the world. Facebook’s recently announced 5-word mission to “Bring the World Closer Together” makes clear their intention to do just that. The internet has given billions of people access to education, information, and most importantly each other — Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have a combined user base of 2.78 billion people worldwide, while messenger applications WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger have 2 billion users as of January 2017.

With over 1.8 billion people on Facebook alone, it’s easy to imagine that Mark Zuckerberg’s platform has great potential for making some kind of social impact. In 2015 the Facebook founder joined Bill Gates and Richard Branson, along with other like-minded entrepreneurs in a coalition with a vision of sparking a “new economic revolution.” The economic revolution that Zuckerberg and his mega-rich counterparts are hoping to facilitate with their Breakthrough Energy Coalition is founded on a zero-carbon future. However, there's another big question that has yet to be answered: how much does social media influence the way people and communities interact with the natural environment?

The answer seems to be “not much,” as the success of social media platforms and profiles alike find much of their value in one specific way: advertising revenue. Social media has become increasingly important for businesses to learn about their customers, building brand awareness, and run targeted ads, all adding to their growth potential and improving revenue. For individuals, the benefit of a major social media presence is through advertising, product placement, and the most unfortunate outcome of social media advertising: ClickBait.

Even as investors and philanthropists begin to focus on environmental stewardship, little effort has been made to develop a social platform that engages the billions of actively daily users in “environmentally aware” decision-making or consumer behavior. Not once does the Breakthrough Energy Coalition discuss the role or importance of social media users in the success of an environmentally-friendly economic revolution.

Last year, residential solar companies were installing a new photovoltaic solar system every three minutes. Still, solar energy accounts for less than 5% of national energy sources. In just a few years, Elon Musk he has grown his Electric Vehicle company, Tesla, into the largest in the United States - with over 40,000 fully electric cars on the road. The problem is, that’s less than .5% (one-half a percent) of the total cars on the road in the U.S. today are electric. Although Musk holds a comfortable lead in front of competing EV car manufacturers, it remains to be seen how revolutionary technologies that reduce impacts on the environment will achieve mainstream acceptance without increasing social demand.

Eco-entrepreneurialism may bring us clean energy technologies and even pave the road for relocating our species to nearby planets, but there hasn’t been any major social breakthrough that has the potential to redefine how humans care for the planet we currently depend on. As Clean Tech continues to improve, it is unlikely that we will see the rapid growth of eco-friendly consumer behavior without the support of social media. It seems reasonable to believe that an environmental superstar like Elon Musk or Leonardo DiCaprio (and, just maybe, Al Gore) has more potential to get a large community of people interested and excited about new, cleaner options in the economy. Elon Musk might be the closets thing the world has seen to an Eco-Superhero.

Who will be the eco-entrepreneur we idolize the same way we do household names like Mark Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs? Chances are it won’t be Elon Musk — with the growth of SpaceX it appears he is more interested in relocating to Mars than spending much more time trying to save our current planetary home. 

Even as people are able to rapidly support environmental campaigns by clicking buttons in an email, these acts of “clicktivism” are not contributing to a greater social transformation towards environmental stewardship. In our increasingly connected world, genius ideas can cross paths on a twitter feed, a timeline post, or in a group chat on WhatsApp. 

We can only hope it is just a matter of time until the the Clean Tech Revolution sees the growth and success that social media platforms have seen in the past 10 years. Social media may lend a hand in addressing global issues like climate change, food security, and biodiversity loss, but ultimately there is no better way to reduce human impacts on the environment than individual action. With nearly 3 billion people using social media, this is the greatest potential currently available for sharing ideas and encouraging sustainable and environmentally-friendly behaviors worldwide.