Doesn’t it seem like every time you go onto Facebook you get bombarded with articles on social issues? Clown sighting, bullying cases, gender appropriation, and legalizing marijuana. Where are all the major issues? We know they’re still around, they just don’t seem to be talked about as much.

Not that social issues aren’t important, they are, in fact, extremely important. It’s just that with the daily use of social media in our society, social issues tend to be presented more.

Why is this? Social issues are issues that we can easily relate to. They usually affect us in some direct and seen way, I know I was scared to walk back from the library late at night because of recent clown sightings. We also like to talk about social issues more because, well, they are easy to talk about. What I mean is, they don’t require a lot of prior knowledge about the topic. We all know what bullying is, we all know how terrible it is, and we all know what it looks like, so it’s easy to share the video about the boy fighting back against a bully at his school. Whereas major issues; war, drought, famine, national debt, and globalization are topics that require more extensive knowledge.

In one sense, it’s great that social issues are so widely talked about because of social media and their relevance to our daily lives. It helps social causes like Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ movements; it makes us more aware of the social issues around us.

Yet, in comparison to social issues, we hardly hear about major issues. If we do, they are often so overly generalized that we lose track of what the actual issues are. For example, on the topic of famine, everyone always says that there are starving kids in Africa, but really, we hardly know anything about the actual issue of famine going on there, let alone here in America (except to eat all your food on your plate because for some reason that will help them).

Even when a major issue is brought up, it can quickly get pushed aside by social issues. This is because major issues are long lasting. Issues of famine have been going on since the beginning on time, whereas clown sighting are new and interesting to us. We seem to have a shortened attention span when it comes to the news, we like the new and exciting.

Furthermore, when major issues are brought up, they are often connected to biased ideas. Maybe there is an article shared on your news feed that talks about climate change, but it claims it isn’t real. Major issues often get mucked up by political viewpoints and this makes them harder to talk about.

What does this say about our culture? It shows that we like the new and now. We like hearing and discussing new and exciting social issues which isn’t a bad thing because social issues are just as important as major issues. Yet, we tend to forget some of the long lasting issues because our news feed or social buzz is clogged up with fleeting social news rather than important, worldly news.