A Social Media State of Emergency

It’s 10 o’clock at night and you’re riding your bike home from school. As you cross the intersection near your home, a car swerves into your bike and knocks you on the ground. You try to stand up, but realize you can’t move your legs. What is your next step?

For most people, the obvious answer would be to call 911 and ask for help. However, in our technologically consumed society, 911 might not be the first number you dial. Instead, many people are turning to Facebook and Twitter to get their voices heard.

A recent story on Mashable looked at how social media is influencing emergency situations. One event in particular really stuck out to me. In 2009, two girls were stuck in a water drain. Rather than call the police or 911 for help, they posted their cry for help on Facebook and later received help.

Would I have done that? Eventually, but 911 would have been my initial instinct. Does this mean we are changing as a society? When I was growing up calling 911 was standard. Have we become so obsessed with our electronic devices that rather than call for help, we tweet or Facebook about it? Revolutionary.

According to the Mashable study, 28% of people would definitely use a social media tool to contact friends and family in an area-wide emergency to let them know that they were safe. On the contrary, only 16% of people said they would definitely not. As technology continues to be even more intertwined in our lives, it is slowly changing the way we handle almost any situation.

If people are turning to social media for help, what does this say about our basic infrastructure? Recently, the Austin-Statesman wrote an article about 911 staff shortages how it was causing phone delays. This past year, more than 6,000 [911] callers received a recorded message instead of speaking to an actual operator. If citizens are unable to rely on the government-provided services, it's no wonder they have decided to turn to social media networks.

Many social media websites have adapted a "location" or GPS capability. Foursquare gives users the option to add new locations. Locations include a Google map from where the user has "checked in." In a time of emergency, this location feature might be a life saver. Like Foursquare, Facebook also has a "check-in" option available for users. 

Although many people have began to use social media as an emergency-outlet tool, the system is not completely flawless. Twitter only allows users to use 140 characters or less per a tweet. In a time of a crisis, 140 characters might not cut it. Depending on the application you are using, programs such as twitlonger, allow for tweets to continue outside the traditional 140 standard.

Another major flaw that most of us social media advocates have encountered, are the network overloads. “Twitter is overcapacity, again!” How many times have you tried to log in and instead get stuck with the picture of the whale telling you the website is over capacity. This could be hazardous during an emergency when you need to get news out. Facebook is generally pretty good with keeping the network up and running. However, this past semester Facebook was down for a few hours and chaos almost broke out.

I have always said Twitter makes you realize how many friends you actually have. I have close to 2000 Facebook friends, but barely 200 followers on Twitter. What would be the point of using a social media tool if no one could get my message? Thank goodness for hashtags (#seriously).

As we continue to spend most of our time living through some sort of social media alter-universe, it is only natural that we integrate it into every aspect of our lives – including emergencies. How and when we choose to use these social media networks during a crisis is completely situational. However, it has been interesting to see how our society has slowly started using social media for more than a PR or business tool.