Ego Networks and the Power of Social Media
In the seventh grade, I had a french class with Chance Ammirata. He was a classmate and was your average student at my school. He eventually left my school the following year (transferred to another high school in Miami), and I lost touch with him, but we were still friends on Snapchat and Instagram. A relationship that is passive and does not require effort to maintain. I would get occasional glimpses of his life as he would get of mine. His life got flipped upside down when his lung collapsed in August of this year. He claimed that the hole that caused the collapse was due to vaping the now extremely popular “Juul.” Juul is everywhere and sold in nearly every corner store or gas station. Within my Miami community, I have many friends that Juul and knew how popular this device was among even middle school students. Although there is not much scientific evidence backing his claims, the situation was scary enough to incite panic in many.
He documented the whole situation over eight days on his Snapchat and Instagram accounts posting graphic images of his lungs and the many surgeries he was going through. His condition spread like wildfire among my friends, many of my friends on both social networks were students from other high schools in the Miami area; they knew Chance personally or had met him at a social gathering. His images began to get reposted on my friend’s accounts, spreading awareness of the dangers and consequences of vaping.
At first, his images were only being posted by friends within the community. It was grouped within my network of high schoolers from Miami. It only took one significant social media presence to see one of his posts for it to explode. A social media influencer reposted his images and created a bridge to a whole new group of individuals. This social media influencer also had connections to other large accounts with millions of followers, and the story began to spread exponentially. Eventually, it reached global status when it was picked up by major news outlets such as DailyMail, Newsweek, New York Post, CBS, and Insider. The network now had millions of nodes, and its center was Chance, he was the ego. He alone has created this enormous buzz over the dangers of vaping by choosing to document his story. This situation is also a display of the power of social media. Chance’s Instagram account had around 1000 followers at the time of the first post. It now has almost 24 thousand followers, and his final post has nearly 300,000 likes. It also has over 15,000 comments, and many of them are from massive social media celebrities with millions of fans. He also tweeted his message, and it has over 40 thousand retweets and likes.
I am glad to say that Chance is doing well now, and he has used his new global platform to start a campaign against youth vaping. He frequently posts about new studies and interacts with his followers by asking them questions and posting their responses. Social media has the power to propel the smallest stories into worldwide news. This story connected explicitly with many due to the expansive spread of vaping (especially Juul) around the world. Many know that what they are doing is not healthy for their bodies, and it required someone to show them the consequences for them to face reality.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B01BufahqQB/
https://www.newsweek.com/florida-teenager-warns-against-juuling-after-his-lung-collapsed-1453253
https://www.insider.com/viral-tweet-shows-collapsed-lung-from-vaping-but-cause-unclear-2019-9