Do you remember a time before the internet? If you wanted to speak to someone, you’d either have to physically meet them in person at some pre-ordained time or place or you’d have to pick up the phone and make a call. If you had a gripe or an opinion you wanted to share and felt that you needed an audience, you’d have to mobilise yourself. This took time, patience and energy and it also meant that the flames of your passion would have to stay alight for longer than five minutes. It’s a far cry from the keyboard warrioring we all do today.

Just think about this for a second; how many surveys have you done last week? How many comments have you left on social media posts? How many articles have you shared? And all through these processes, you probably felt like you were doing something great, like you were contributing in some way. You may even have felt tired after the latest round of bickering with someone you don’t know and will most likely never meet: all that energy wasted for absolutely nothing. It’s genuinely tragic if you think about it. Here we are not attending protests, meetings and discussions but still feeling like we are doing our part by leaving care emojis on posts and arguing with Kevin from Mosta, with whom we have precisely one dodgy friend in common.

It also affects how we take in information and process it; we see articles we don’t read and share them based on the title. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been attacked because of a standfirst which people have taken out of context because they haven’t bothered to read the article. We no longer seem to care about checking whether something is real or not. We take everything at face value and continue to spread fake news like a virus.

Money doesn’t just talk in this country, it performs an interpretative dance in a feather boa and patent, thigh-high boots- Anna Marie Galea

Take last week, for example; speculation was rife when a missing man was found dead. People began sharing the man’s last social media status and pointing fingers. It took his son having to go to a newspaper to clarify that his late father was mentally ill and that his story was different from that being painted on social media. Can you imagine how distressing it must have been to see all these speculations while dealing with the trauma of your father’s death? Can reputations ever be restored after being smashed into so many pieces?

We need to understand the importance of what we are putting out there permanently every day while also being aware that changing our profile picture to a flag in supposed solidarity for a country has won no one any wars yet. There’s also little point in doing that if we are going to then take part in Eurostat surveys and be one of the top three European countries that openly gives more importance to price stability than the defence of values such as democracy and freedom. Money doesn’t just talk in this country, it performs an interpretative dance in a feather boa and patent, thigh-high boots.

We need to all take a step back, re-evaluate what we are actually putting out into the world and see the impact we are having. Will you still be a warrior if they took away your keyboard? Will you leave the house to defend the things you claim to believe in? If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it behind a screen.