By Avery Boulware, Campus Carrier News Editor

I’d like you to imagine with me, just for a moment, this election season without social media. You don’t have to cut out TV in this scenario because our parents and even some grandparents had TV during past election seasons. No, imagine a world without #buildthatwall or #nastywoman. Would you still care about what these candidates are saying? I pose this question because I simply don’t think that I would—which is terrible. 

For better or for worse, social media is a primary news source for millenials. According to figures by Borrell and Associates, political campaigns are spending $1 billion on digital media this year. And that money isn’t going towards reaching my grandmother. It’s aimed toward you and me.

Millenials are super into “participatory politics”—way more than generations before us. Jeff Fromm of Forbes defines participatory politics as “a new political movement that encourages individual engagement and participation in ongoing debates and discussions (and) takes place predominately in the social realm.” We like to have active conversations with politicians. We like to know that we are being heard. The more we feel like we matter, the more likely we are to show up to the polls. Politicians know this, which is why that $1 billion is being shot like a laser beam right at us.

I say this because using social media to create an identity is so easy, it’s scary sometimes. Again, you know this. This isn’t news to you. You carefully brand yourself on every platform you’ve logged yourself into. I do it too. Think about how meticulously you pick out which picture to post, which filter to use, which caption to include, the lighting for your Snap story… the list goes on. Now imagine what you could do if you were pouring $1 billion into your Snap stories and tweets. You could be whoever you wanted to be, right?

I’m not saying distrust everything political. You could do that, but you would probably drive yourself insane and the next time I saw you would be in your cabin deep in the woods of Armuchee. We can’t discredit everything politicians say. But I will say that they hire teams of people to make us feel certain ways about them. They have plans and diagrams and schedules for exactly what they want us to know and when they want us to find out. 

Now, you could argue that, because these candidates are in the spotlight 24/7, it must be harder to hide things. But I would combat that with the fact that the best defense is a good offense. As I am writing this, the top tweet on both Trump’s and Clinton’s Twitter page is some kind of attack on the other candidate. It’s easy to draw attention away from your mistakes or your messy past by pointing fingers at another.

I would also turn the tables back to yours and my online presence, reminding you of how carefully you curate how you look online. You probably have way more “friends” online than you would without social media. More people know your name. More people know what you ate for lunch. But these people are viewing your life through the lens you hand them. 

So, my question for you is: what lenses are presidential candidates handing you?