Speak Your MIND, But Did Anyone Listen? The Issue With Viral Activism

In late April, most high school students tapping through their peers’ Instagram stories might have noticed many videos of people pouring buckets of ice water over their heads. This was not some new teenage fad, but instead a movement intended to raise mental health awareness. 

The University of South Carolina’s Mental Illness Needs Discussion (MIND) club created the #SpeakYourMIND challenge in late March of this year – a social media challenge inspired by the original ice bucket challenge in 2014 for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), with the goal of raising money for mental health resources and eliminating stigma surrounding mental health. 

Although well-intentioned, the challenge proved to be flawed. As it achieved virality on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram, it became increasingly clear many treated it as a trend rather than the promotion of a worthwhile cause, defeating the purpose of the challenge by failing to properly promote mental health. 

In the introduction of each video, all the participants followed a similar script: thanking a friend for a nomination for the challenge, nominating a few others to participate, and finally, “you have twenty-four hours to respond”. That phrase acted as an ultimatum, letting the nominees know that if they didn’t complete the challenge within a day, they had to instead donate to Active Minds, a national non-profit for mental health; an aspect which many were unaware of. 

However, what was notably lacking in most videos was a description of what the #SpeakYourMIND challenge was actually for. Many students, when asked, were even unable to pinpoint which “USC” the challenge originated from, the University of Southern California or the University of South Carolina. 

This evident lack of research and thought that students demonstrated in these videos only further solidifies that the motivation behind their participation was to hop on a bandwagon rather than promote mental health awareness.

Although Active Minds managed to raise over $400,000, they did fail to reach their $500,000 goal. This demonstrates, once again, the mismanagement of their challenge by participants, as many failed to understand the rules of the challenge before participation, resulting in a vast loss of funds.

The challenge, inspired by the 2014 ice bucket challenge in support of ALS, failed to follow in its predecessor’s footsteps. Both had many parallels in format and intention: to raise money and awareness for their respective causes. 

Specifically, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge intended to promote awareness of a neurodegenerative disease and raise money to find a cure. The challenge raised approximately $115 million, which was invested into ALS research and care for those affected by the disease. 

However, the guidelines for the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge were much more concrete and advertised. If the nominee declined to participate in the challenge, they would be obligated to donate $100 to the ALS Association. If they chose to partake in the challenge, they would still donate ten dollars to the association. 

This is where the Speak Your MIND Challenge and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge differ. Participants perceived the Speak Your MIND Challenge as either/or. You either do the ice bucket challenge OR you donate. Many of the participants of the Speak Your MIND challenge weren’t inclined to donate to Active Minds, as that aspect was largely unknown. Of the thousands of people who participated, only a fraction donated. This resulted in a large loss of donations that may have helped them reach or even exceed their monetary goal, a loss of donations that could have gone toward programs for mental health advocacy. 

While raising $400,000 is no small feat, Active Minds had the opportunity to gain a much larger amount of funding had the rules of the challenge been properly advertised both on the official USC MIND accounts and by participants of the challenge. 

Ultimately, the USC Speak Your MIND challenge fell short on two fronts: clear messaging and failure of participants to treat the challenge as the form of advocacy that it was intended to be. The challenge went from well-intended fundraising and advocacy to a social media trend, negating any initial goodwill and convoluting the challenge’s goals. If another attempt to spread mental health awareness were to happen in the future, clarity and mindfulness are key. Teenagers struggle disproportionately with mental health compared to other age groups. If we fail to promote this issue with sincerity, then we risk people taking mental health less seriously as a whole.

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