Column: Hattie’s Hangout

Breast Cancer Awareness Month. National Down Syndrome Awareness Month. National Mental Illness Awareness Week. World Mental Health Day. 

These are just a few of the major awareness events that occurred in the month of October. After looking up all the awareness campaigns happening in October, I found the ones listed above accompanied by several other awareness campaigns I never knew existed, such as Dental Hygiene Awareness Month. 

As the month ends, the next set of national awareness campaigns will arise in November. As you scroll through your social media feeds, be on the lookout for pictures with people in matching colored shirts, reposting inspirational quotes or statistics tied to the awareness they are advocating for. Because of our society’s capacity for mass communication, everyone can promote what they are passionate about. 

One common thing everyone seems to be passionate about is being aware. 

With everyone increasingly aware of social issues, does actual action come from this awareness?

People becoming aware to situations can be a useful tool, but if no change or action comes through this awareness, the real issues brought to light fade.

One of this biggest campaigns people see in October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. If you flip on any NFL football game on Sundays, expect to see players wearing small pink ribbons, gloves, socks or shoes. 

Fans can even match their favorite players by purchasing pink merchandise that sends its proceeds to the American Cancer Society. Football franchises adorned in pink are praised for their dedication to the breast cancer fight, but according to studies that follow the flow of donation money, only a small amount of the royalties earned from pink merchandise goes to the fight against breast cancer.

According to the numbers found on Charity Navigator, only 8.01% of the money earned goes toward cancer research. Based off of data from the NFL, for every $100 sold in breast cancer merchandise, only $11.25 goes to breast cancer research and the NFL keeps the rest, dividing it among manufacturers. 

We emphasize awareness through words and clothing, but the needed action has become a side bar. 

Think back to the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge that soaked through everyone’s Instagram feeds in 2014. After a single video went viral, everyone nominated each other to dump a bucket of ice-cold water on themselves in hopes of bringing awareness to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord. If someone was nominated, they would have 24 hours to get soaked by water on camera and would have to donate money to the cause. 

Millions of dollars were donated to research of ALS through these videos, but many people got distracted by the trendiness of the challenge and forgot about the real cause behind the viral video.

Becoming an advocate for awareness has become a social media trend instead of real social change.

With so many awareness campaigns out there for people to join, often the real need for help and change gets lost behind our surface-level awareness. We say we want change, but we would rather just post or repost something on social media than put action to our words. 

Society seems to care far more about looking like they want to make a difference than actually stepping out and making the difference themselves.