Over the past week I, like millions of others, have had Paris on my mind. Friday, my world was rocked by reports of shootings, suicide bombs, and bursts of shaky video footage. On Saturday, my world was flooded with Facebook statuses that read “Pray for Paris," and Facebook even offered a temporary filter allowing you to overlay your profile picture with the colors of the French flag. I fully support expressing solidarity with France in their time of grief, but this response left me with several serious questions. First of all, what happens next? What happens a week from now when temporary profile filters reset and tragedy begins to fade from discussion? To me, this response represents a much larger phenomenon that is taking place in our generation. Ten years ago, social media was practically non-existent, as was social media activism. Social media has created a platform where we can express our opinions in a matter of seconds and then almost immediately have them affirmed by the “likes” we receive from our peers. This brings me to my second question. Is social media activism enough?

In defense of social media, it can help spark conversation and organize groups of people. We saw this very clearly in the Arab Spring uprisings when Facebook conversations helped ignite uprisings in Tunisia in 2010 and in many other countries like Egypt and Libya.

My slightly more cynical side has trouble accepting that liking someone’s status, changing your profile picture, or even posting an article could really make a difference. We are all too willing to express our opinions from the safety of our computers but hesitant to follow through with actions.

These thoughts were rampaging through my head this week as I scrolled through post after post expressing condolences to France. I found myself nodding along, feeling very sympathetic, but then I started to look around. The truth is, attacks like these happen with alarming frequency in the non-Western world, and we seem to turn a blind eye. More worrisome to me is the fact that when we do take notice of these attacks, our attention is only momentary. The ramifications of these attacks are not going to fade with the same speed that our Facebook filters will. I will concede that social media can be useful, but I don’t want our activism to stop after we log off of our computers and our actions are no longer public. My fear is that our activism is driven by the desire to participate in a social media event, not a commitment to pursue justice and equality.