In case you don’t know what’s happening and are wondering why some of your Facebook friends are changing their profile to some kind of cartoon characters, last week, a viral anti-child abuse campaign went around on Facebook which goes along the line of:
“Join the fight against child abuse…Change your profile picture to childhood memory cartoon character by this Monday!”
Now while many played along just for a good cause, some are skeptical and are wondering how changing of a profile picture could help at all. It is said that the viral campaign started as a move to get people to donate money to the cause but unfortunately the message got lost as it was circulated around.
Well donations or not, my take is, changing your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon character to join the fight against child abuse is just as effective as the pink ribbon campaign for breast cancer awareness. You won’t have anything to lose out on by just changing your profile picture much like going pink on breast cancer awareness month on October. How can that help breast cancer? It encourages women all over the world to perform breast self-examination and go for more regular health checkups. If the Facebook cartoon profile picture thing pulls off, it could make people aware of the seriousness of child abuse and actually call the police when they suspect something is amiss about the screaming child in their neighbor’s house. A child may not know his/her rights but an adult like you and me should and do something to prevent such act of cruelty. Companies are using social networking to market their products now so why can’t awareness campaigns take the same path too?
(Source: Daily Illini)
