Yes, this is a real thing, although I wish it was not. About 5 months ago, the world woke up to Immediately, we went into a panic. On Instagram, Snapchat, and Whatsapp, we shared articles, videos, and pictures, and texted our friends to save the Rainforest. It was a global movement unlike any other. But here is the problem. We did not care about the fires as a mere 2 months later, we have forgotten about it. The world had just followed the trend. However, this isn’t simply my opinion; this is shown clearly in publicly available data. According to Google Trends, the world’s interest in the Amazon Rainforest overtime looked like this:

That one spike and that is IT. That one spike which is 1 week is how much we cared about the Amazon Rainforest. This and many more examples are clear proof that we are not interested in the problems, we are only interested in what is trending. And thus, This is what we call, THE TREND TRAP. We all are guilty of it including you and me. We both many times focus on a few trending topics for some time, until a new trend is born and we focus on that and forget the last trend.

If you ask me, the Amazon is not dying from the fires, but from us, from our short attention span. Another example is the plastic straw movement. Sounds familiar now eh? About a year ago, the trend was plastic straws and how they are damaging the environment. Everyone was saying “Don’t use plastic straws, save the environment”. Now, no one really cares because it’s not that important. 5 months ago, the trend was the burning Amazon rainforest and now, it is Covid-19. Or next year it could be about a dying zoo animal.

One day some problem is hot, the next day it’s not. These short-lived trends are tearing society apart as with them comes rumors and misinformation which are the biggest problem we face. Take the example of Covid-19, on all social media platforms, rumors about the virus are spreading faster than the virus itself. This is not how we save the planet, this is not sustainable at all. 

Around the world, professionals saw these problems, not as a trend, but a problem they must fix. But sadly it takes years and in some cases even decades to fix them. The real change-makers and warriors of our planet care about these problems, take their time and analyze these problems and even if that takes decades they pledge to do something to solve them. They don’t follow trends. So lets ask ourselves, do we really care about the problem? Do we really care about the solution? Or do we only care about the trend? These are questions worth asking no matter how uncomfortable it is to answer, because that prevents us from falling into, THE TREND TRAP.

– Parth Naik 8F