Shwe Wadi @ Wendy, 15

School: Jurong Secondary School

Topic: Can social media make a positive impact on organ donation?

Award: Merit, Senior Category, 2023

Social media has become a part of everyday life. In my opinion, it is too informal a platform to properly discuss the serious issue of organ donation. I believe that social media, instead of spreading awareness about the benefits of organ donation, would not be able to make a positive impact on organ donation. Due to the extent of danger that lurks beneath the seemingly innocent glowing screen, the issue of organ donation should not even be brought up on the platform of social media at all.

One such danger of social media is its ability to attract illegal and unethical practices and in the context of organ donation, organ trafficking syndicates might use social media for their own purposes. Many syndicate leaders turn to social media to lure innocent people into giving up their organs for money. The victims are usually those who reside in slums who are fighting to survive and who are often illiterate. They often take up odd jobs to make ends meet and are susceptible to opportunities to make some extra cash — including selling their own organs. The leaders of organ trafficking syndicates use social media, because unlike traditional media such as radio or television, content posted online on social media can reach a much wider audience, and is not monitored by authorities, and has the potential to go viral. Their aim is to exploit these features of social media. Even the majority of residents in more rural parts of the world do on a phone and are already on popular social media applications like Facebook. Since the poor are not as educated, it is more likely for them to fall into the trap of these evil people. This is precisely why they are so vulnerable. In the Philippines, social media has become a common platform for promoting the sale of healthy kidneys. By simply entering phrases like 'kidney donation Philippines’ or ‘kidney for sale’ into Facebook’s search bar, a multitude of posts by organ brokers, kidney patients and individuals seeking to sell their kidneys will appear. The worst thing about this is that the authorities can’t do anything due to the anonymity of each and every account. It is difficult for them to ascertain if the accounts are being run by actual people or bots. They could even be run by people based overseas. Thus the risks of social media are too much to ignore when crime syndicates exploit the features of social media.

While I believe that social media is a tool with tons of potential, a lot of work has to be put in in order for common users to realise the actual power social media wields. Back in 2012, a little more than a decade ago, Facebook, a very popular social media application, introduced a new feature to all its users. This feature allowed users to tell their friends and family that they were registered organ donors. By publicly declaring their organ donor status, users could inform their friends and family about their decision, and the idea was that they would then inspire others to consider donating their organs. This sounds like a good initiative if not for the response that followed after the initiative was put into place. Data from Donate Life California, the official organ donor registry in the state, revealed that on a typical day, 70 people in California registered with Donate Life. 24 hours after this announcement, close to 4000 people registered. However, as quickly as those numbers, the speed at which they came back down was equally fast. Not even a week later, the numbers went back to their usual level. Considering the fact that in 2012, there were 995 million Facebook users, a mere 4000 registered organ donors is a very small number indeed. Also, the indication of one’s organ donor status on Facebook does not automatically register someone as an organ donor. Users still need to officially register as organ donors through appropriate channels, such as through their local organ donor registry. The reason why officials believe that this campaign flopped was because organ donation is not a topic that is commonly discussed among people and they do not think about it every single day. The weighty issue of organ donation was being treated like an Outfit of the Day (OOTD) post which social media influencers post everyday. Also, the prompts were not repeated and there were no reminders to users in order for this matter to not slip their minds. On social media, all content has to be constantly updated as the space on people’s feeds are limited and content is constantly fighting for a place within the algorithm. Therefore, seldom discussed topics like organ donation will not likely keep people engaged for a long time. Social media simply trivialises the important issue of organ donation.

Lastly, social media can be accessed by anyone and everyone around the world. This means that confidentiality is non-existent. The power of social media should not be underestimated. Photographs of patients needing an organ through living donors or organs from the deceased, can be put up to increase public awareness and up the livelihood of organ donation. However, what happens then when news of a person who is brain dead gets posted on social media? There might then be undue pressure on the family of the brain dead person to release the body for organ donation. It is completely possible for people to be involved in road accidents and experience significant trauma, resulting in brain death. News reporters should not get hold of these situations and post these stories on social media. These stories could go viral and there must be pressure on the family to release the body and support organ donation. While advocating for what feels morally right has no faults on its own, social media should never influence or sway any family’s decisions at such a crucial point of time and the patient’s confidentiality should certainly be respected. After all, patients are humans too. Just imagine the devastation their families must feel. They would already have been grieving and now there is even more stress piling onto them due to the pressure of organ donation. While the social media users need to put themselves in the shoes of those hurting the most, the family must be feeling pressured to listen to all the people commenting that they have to do the ‘right thing’, when the reality is that the decision of what happens to the deceased should be solely based on their family members and not random netizens. Hence, social media offers little to no confidentiality and does not respect the privacy of its users and should not be used as a platform to debate the pros and cons of organ donation as to pressure the families of those who have been declared medically brain dead.

In conclusion, social media does not make a positive impact on organ donation because it is a breeding ground for illegal organ traders to continue their illicit activities while targeting the innocent. It is also very hard to keep important topics like organ donation in people’s minds among the plethora of other content on social media without trivialising this serious issue. Lastly, the privacy of all social media users is not respected especially when they are in a vulnerable situation as social media reaches a wide audience and has the tendency to make things go viral and blow things out of proportion too. I sincerely believe that organ donation needs to be talked about more but social media is just not the platform to advocate for that cause.

Disclaimer: Please note that the views and opinions expressed in the essays for the Live On Festival 2023 are those of the participants and are not endorsed by the National Organ Transplant Unit (Ministry of Health). To learn more about organ donation and organ transplantation in Singapore, please visit www.liveon.gov.sg