What Is Wrong With Social Media Breast Cancer Awareness?

If someone were to ask the question What is the problem with social media breast cancer awareness? some people might take pause to the question.

“What?” you ask. “What could possibly be wrong with a campaign that helps spread awareness of a life-threatening disease?” I’ll tell you what is wrong with it, but, first, let me explain what I mean by social media awareness.

"But how effective is this cyberactivism?"

Meredith, J. (2006). [Breast Cancer Awareness, Louisville, Kentucky]. [Photographed]. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breast_cancer_awareness#/media/File:Breast_Cancer_Awareness_(263497131).jpg

Every October, at the beginning of National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, we all

know of and have possibly taken part in the viral message that gets circulated in honor of this month: “Put your name and the color of the bra you are wearing today as your status. Don’t tell the men! Keep them guessing!” or “Put the number, followed by the word ‘inches,’ and how long it takes to do your hair… Remember last year so many people took part it made national news and, the constant updating of status reminded everyone why we’re doing this and helped raise awareness!! Do NOT tell any males what the status’ mean, keep them guessing!! And please copy and paste (in a message) this to all your female friends to see if we can make a bigger fuss this year than last year!!! I did my part… now YOUR turn! Go on ladies… and let’s have all the men guessing!!” (Mahoney and Tang, 2016).

["I like it on the floor" Facebook Campaign] [Internet]. Daily Mail. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1318206/I-like-floor-Facebook-status-updates-promote-Breast-Cancer-Awareness.html

What they do right:

1. They are successful at getting the message out there and getting others to participate.

2. It is fun and personalized.

3. It makes the participant feel good for doing their part to spread awareness.

4. They spread information encouraging self-checks and prevention.

But how effective is this cyberactivism?

The problems with these types of social media breast cancer awareness are three-fold.

1. They don’t do anything to mobilize any real-life action to cure breast cancer.

Sure it gets women involved in spreading awareness, but what does sharing where you put your purse do to help the cause?

2. These messages are designed to keep men in the dark.

Over 2000 men were diagnosed with breast cancer, resulting in 400 deaths from the disease in 2012, according to the Susan G. Komen foundation (Mahoney and Tang, 2016). So, these memes do not even spread awareness to all it could affect. Perhaps, it’s the lack of awareness spread to men that is the reason for them not finding the illness soon enough.

3. Many found the sexualization of breast cancer problematic (Mahoney and Tang, 2016).

I will admit that even I played along with these memes. It was fun! However, I feel like the focus was more about making your answers interesting, rather than actually spreading awareness. In fact, after a while, I can remember simply getting the message to put this or that as my status, never knowing a reason behind it.

To help amend these problems, first, one must find out what the real challenge is. Then it could be tailored to the needs of the business or organization. There could be a call to volunteer, donate money, sign a petition, or write a letter (Mahoney and Tang, 2016). Think of how far these actions could reach. Just like having a loved one pass away from this horrible disease, think of what it would do to change your audiences’ behavior to volunteer at a cancer treatment facility. Cyber-activity is not what is needed here. Sometimes the answer is not just a click away. Sometimes we need to call people to action to do something in real-life to help the common good.

Resources

Mahoney L. M., & Tang T. (2016). Strategic Social Media: From Marketing to Social Change. [MBS Direct]. Retrieved from https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/#/books/9781118556900/