Social media gets a bad rap these days. Justifiably so, for anyone who has seen The Social Dilemma and then fallen into a dark hole of existential despair, convinced Facebook is slowly melting our minds and chipping away at the foundations of modern democracy. But our ‘social media = bad’ conversations tend to lack a little nuance. It was social media, for example, that largely facilitated the global civil rights movement that ignited after the murder of George Floyd. For me, a huge amount of the education I garnered on the topic of race was facilitated through my feed – from people like Sophia Roe, Brandon Kyle Goodman, Zeba Blay and Aja Barber, none of whom I would have found were it not for forwarded DMs and handle tags on Stories.

During the pandemic our lives shifted almost entirely online, and with most people at a loss as to when they will next physically see loved ones, technology has become more of an essential service than ever before. Yan Yan Chan, one of Australia’s most revered social influencers, has seen her relationship with social media change more dramatically than most. “To tell you the truth, I’ve always been apprehensive about sharing anything that’s too opinionated, or about being vocal online,” she says. “It always felt like such a small or insignificant act, but in the last six months – first with the bushfires, and now with Black Lives Matter – I’ve realized that revolutions happen when millions of small acts happen at once. I now consider it a responsibility to use my voice online.”

Chan’s views echo the same paradox that many of us internet-dwellers – even those without 180,000 dedicated followers – find ourselves in: Where to tow the line between empty virtue signaling (we won’t go there with the black squares) and squandering the power that digital influence affords you? The question becomes harder – or maybe, perversely, easier – when your audience is largely Gen Z, who expects political engagement and moral transparency from the people they follow.

“It was really surprising, once I decided to start speaking out, to see how many people of colour – many who were much younger than me – reached out with messages of support,” says Chan. “It’s surprising to me that I could have the power to instigate someone changing their perceptions on a topic over something as simple as a social media post – but that’s exactly what happened, and it confirms to me how important it is to keep having difficult conversations, both online and offline.”

It’s easy to agree with the sentiment that people should ‘use their platform for good’, but how this plays out in practice is often complicated and murky. There is line touted on the internet about the importance of ‘letting people learn’, but it’s a motto we rarely see play out in real life. As this new wave of Black Lives Matter support reached fever pitch, a reckoning was taking place in the fashion industry. Brands and publications that had failed to meaningfully engage in inclusion and representation were named and shamed. CEOs stepped down, and the feed filled with Notes App apologies from those promising to “do the work”.