As attention spans continue to worsen over time, with the average human attention span just 47 seconds, committing to important tasks feels so time-consuming, like reading a leader’s history before voting for them.
Voting in today’s age has narrowed from reading about the historical achievements of leaders or learning more about the potential efforts they made to bring about change in the country to judging a leader on the basis of their social media presence. How everyone is talking about them, how people are talking about them for up to 30 seconds, how certain people are trolling them online. In this era, it is so easy to be influenced by clickbait and instant content. The malleability of our opinions to the content we consume is a serious issue because it undermines our ability to think rationally. When such an overload of opinions is present on topics as important as voting for leaders of the country, the situation becomes even more concerning.
Voting for leaders, the ones who will run the democratic affairs of the country, and the decisions made by them would be the same we will have to adhere to. It’s stupid to be so careless with our voting rights and choose to vote for someone just because their internet presence is convincing enough.
Due to the shrinking attention spans, the leaders are also meeting us at our level and running their campaigns primarily on social media. From conveying short video messages to addressing their potential motives in an Instagram post, they have to contend with the social media perception of themselves and their competitors in the real world. Lately, we have experienced multiple examples of leaders gaining public popularity through social media. Some examples include Zohran Mamdani, who campaigned heavily on social media for his election as mayor of New York City, and Pakistani social activist Iqrar Ul Hasan, who is actively campaigning for his newly formed political party, Awaam Raaj, entirely on social media platforms. The caring for social media footprint is too much, you see.
Zohran Mamdani And the Swag Edits
The current New York mayor, Zohran Mamdani, was the talk of the town in early 2026. The whole internet was filled with his edits, his swag replies, the clip where he corrected the spelling of his name “the name is Mamdani”, remixes were made of that audio, people made TikToks using the audio, and everybody went crayyyziii. But for the most part, nobody knew what they were supporting; it was just a clip of an interview that, seemingly, people fell in love with, in which Zohran Mamdani stated that he wanted to make this world better for common citizens and not favor billionaires. There’s nothing wrong with this statement, but judging a person who was running for Mayor of a city as diverse and populous as New York, it wasn’t safe to hand over such a huge responsibility to someone whose internet presence felt charming. You get it?
Zohran Mamdani actually did a pretty amazing job in getting the attention of the majority through just social media. This tactic was pretty impressive- to campaign on social media, where most people spend most of their time, and get them on my side.
Iqrar Ul Hasan And the Gen Z Revolution: The Awaam Raaj Party:
Iqrar Ul Hasan, a Pakistani social activist, has recently founded his own political party, The Awaam Raaj party. According to his claims, this party is solely made for Gen Zs to unite and finally find their voice against the injustices in the system. His campaign on social media, where he calls on Gen Z to join the party, has turned out to be relatively popular. He has managed to get many people from Gen Z to join the party. He puts out his messages through short video clips, often talking enthusiastically and finding every opportunity to turn in favor of the campaign. For Example, he also discussed the British Council Exam leaks that occurred recently in 2026 and urged Gen Zs to come together and fight against the unjust system.
His campaign style is targeted at a specific age group, i.e., Gen Z; he has kept his campaign centered on strong emotions and nationalism, urging people to “do something for their country”.
Even though nothing seems wrong with this campaign being carried out this way, it instills the idea of instant democracy in the people and makes them think that once they step up and become part of this political party, all their problems and injustices will be solved immediately. Whereas it would take a huge chunk of time for young people joining this party to understand political systems and tactics, as legislative systems are not that simple to understand for everyone.
Democracy is just likes and shares away
The problem with these sorts of online campaigns is that they attempt to put highly debatable topics, discussing political leaders in depth and reading through their contributions using historical records, into small clips that only last a few seconds. It tries to reduce complex individual opinions to just a matter of likes and shares on social media. And that is not okay.
Democracy paving its way online, especially leaders carrying out their election campaigns online, is messing with our abilities to form structured opinions considering different aspects of discussions, including the history of the subject leader, the dynamics of the area they are taking responsibility for, and deciding whether they would help the current affairs get better or not. Even though going on social media does help connect with younger generations, who mostly spend their time online, it is not a good idea to make it the primary medium for campaigning and gaining public popularity.