Invasion of Memories: Facebook as an Effective Media on the Fight Against Child Abuse and Neglect

Recently, there is a fad in Facebook about changing profile pictures to cartoon characters. The "aim" of the fad is to fuel awareness on Violence against Children. The aim is good and dramatic. But would you like to know who and when it started?

According to an investigation of a blogger, the earliest evidence he can find is from another blog post dated November 27, 2010. According to the post -

The text of the campaign that was written in Facebook says “November 22 to November 29, change your profile picture on Facebook, for a cartoon of your childhood. Why is this? To see only cartoons until Monday on Facebook, to create an invasion of memories of a well spent childhood to join the fight against child violence”.

So if you think deeper about the online origin, if we are going to base on these blogs, it is still in Facebook and started around mid-November.

Yesterday, Dec. 2, I was listening to Disenchanted Kingdom of 99.5 RT and their topic was also the fad. According to one of the DJs (I don't recall if its King DJ Logan, JJ or Marf), the fad originated from Greece. I don't know where he got the information, but it seems that this fad is one of these social experiments - like the "Nick Carter is a girl" of the 90s, the "search the words sexy pinay", and the "other Hayden Kho's videos" that were released also in the Internet to see social reactions. The DJ tells the world that the Greek social experiment doesn't really have any "protect the children" drive. Somebody just added up the cause. If I am Wikipedia, I'll tag that as [citation needed]. But whoever that somebody is, I think he's an angel.

Another intriguing part of this fad is the change of the campaign texts. The current campaign texts roaming in different Facebook walls says like this:

Change your Facebook profile picture to a cartoon from your childhoodand invite your friends to do the same. Until Monday there should be no human faces on Facebook, but an invasion of memories! This is for campaign against violence on children.

I think you noticed that the time element is now different. The first text says that the campaign is only from November 22 to 29. Now, it is just until Monday - without specific date. Because it is a unspecified date, this fad may go on forever. This fad has become a genuine campaign.

The truth is, it is not important to know the source of this all. What is important is that Facebook users around the world are now aware of one of the perennial problems of every society in every country - child violence, abuse and neglect. The UNICEF have been looking for solutions since 2003. I believe, this text campaign in Facebook has been a very great help for UNICEF and other child-friendly institutions and individuals who are fighting for the sake of the youth.

"Even if it's just as simple as a shout or a hit of a stick, it is still really violence"

- Cora Buala, Roxas City, participant in United Nations Secretary-General's Study on Violence against Children 2006

a former abused child.