Is Social Media Creating a Culture of Followers?

I read a recent article discussing the idea of Twitter being used by activists to mobilize people for their agendas. Especially in developing countries, the lack of information flow has been a huge problem for enabling movements. Yet, as the cost of computers and technology become cheaper and cheaper, more of the world is able to reach the internet, allowing activists to post images, articles, and other information arguing for their viewpoints.

However, this got me thinking. As accessing information is getting easier, the need for actually finding things out for oneself gets proportionately less. What results is a world using social media to follow others. There will always be people that will actively pursue their causes and find and post information, in an attempt to mobilize the followers. Yet, I believe the number of these people will dwindle down as the ease of spreading this information increases. In other words, people might becoming easier to mobilize, but they are likewise becoming less inclined to become activists themselves.

Just out of curiosity (since I was on this topic), I looked up the top Twitter pages based on rankings. As expected, all of these are celebrity pages and the number of followers is huge and growing exponentially. As we already have a culture that follows the every move of celebrities, Twitter and other social media are making this addiction stronger. This was already a problem of our culture, but with the ease of posting information, celebrities can keep us all constantly posted on everything that his happening, thus enabling us to follow them. This essentially will grow and grow, as supply will always meet demand.