As we head into another bout of Movement Control Order (MCO), I talked to my students online as we cooled down after spending an hour or so discussing young public opinion leaders in Malaysia.
As one by one typed in their favourites, I could not help but noticed that almost all of them are celebrities and TikTokers as I nodded to them in agreement as if I knew who all these people were.
I posed them this question: What was their significance that you adulate them so much?
One could hear a pin drop from Subang Jaya all the way to Los Angeles. As I weaselled more out of them, the answers were all of vanity and frivolity.
Using this space, I started to open rhetorical questions for them to get back to me in the weeks to come.
Did they manage to mobilise you to do good? After a minute or several swipe downs, did you feel good about yourself? Also, is this person someone you would still follow and allow them to pollute your mind?
I wanted to say influence, but judging from a quick google search, these TikTokers (some of them) should be put under house arrest (or have their social media accounts privileges revoked)!
I shared with the students that growing up in the 1990s and early 2000s, it was notoriously difficult to identify someone who has a different crusade outside of entertainment.
I wanted to relate and align myself to young environmentalists then but found it difficult to do so, merely due to my access to the internet mostly.
So now that everything is accessible and I have additional means to access information, I've done so happily by engaging in conversations and digging deeper into issues that mattered.
With issues of climate change becoming front and central, I am currently trying (valiantly, at that) to coax my students into taking part in ensuring that their voices are heard when it comes to their participation in the top five global environmental issues that urgently need our attention, from biodiversity, water pollution, deforestation, pollution and climate change.
I told them that you don't have to be a know-it-all to be part of the conversation, but enough to know that these issues will affect you somehow or another. If it is not today, it will be tomorrow.
I took the liberty to share with them opinion leaders (young, smart and down to earth individuals) who are fluent in environmental issues – globally – such as Joe Baxter Bernard, Aidil Iman, Celine Ng and Muhammad Ridzwan Ali to name a few.
Being in the education line (tertiary) for eight years and counting now, I observed that young minds are very impressionable and undoubtedly curious.
We need to play a tug of war with them; to some, if we don't introduce or feed them enough to start, they won't start. For some, quenching their curiosity will do wonders and they will self-mobilise into the unknown and emerge victorious.
If I managed to convert a student in a week or in a month to take interest in the issues of climate change, I can sleep better and dream of a better Malaysia from and for Malaysians.
The writer is Educator and Researcher, Public Relations Department, Faculty of Communication & Media Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA