A once-viral trend has returned to Instagram and TikTok with users dumping buckets of ice water over their heads to support mental health. The #SpeakYourMIND Ice Bucket Challenge, reignited by the University of Southern Carolina’s (USC) MIND (Mental Illness Needs Discussion) club, quickly spread, launching on March 31 and blowing up following April 19 as the latest wave of viral activism, with the club’s Instagram account accumulating over 800k followers amid the viral challenge.
The digital age has brought about a new kind of activism conducted on social media. Despite the club’s noble origins and cause, which include pushes towards “destigmatizing mental health discussions and fostering support on [USC’s] campus,” this challenge reflects the greater issue with performative activism. With this, raising awareness often becomes more about public performance instead of meaningful action.
The challenge revived the original 2014 Ice Bucket Challenge that went viral to raise awareness and funds for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis. The same widespread recognition is reemerging through a new ruse of awareness.
USC MIND’s challenge was designed to raise awareness about mental health, normalize open conversations about mental illness, promote suicide prevention and encourage people to seek help without shame. It was originally conceived after the death of a student who suffered from mental health challenges.
As the challenge gained virality, its original message has been drowned out by social media semantics, devolving into a popularity contest of who has the most views and social media clout.Many participants skip the hashtag, ignore the fundraiser link and share their videos without even acknowledging the cause.
To be a true activist is to advocate for reform and campaign for or against a crucial cause; when the intent gets lost in the execution, it lacks the fundamental principles of activism altogether.
Dumping a bucket of ice water on yourself, filming it and posting it on social media without linking any resources or discussing the reason behind the challenge takes away from the movement’s purpose.
Contrary to the trend’s original intent regarding self-empowerment, it makes people feel self-conscious with the fear that no one will repost or follow through with the challenge nomination. They may be afraid of being quietly dismissed or left hanging, ultimately looking foolish or socially excluded. This intensifies anxiety about who to tag or whether their posts will be acknowledged. It leads to people feeling insecure about participating and peer pressured to join simply to avoid feeling left out.
For those already struggling with their mental health, the challenge can feel especially isolating. Some may see their friends participating, tagging each other and posting videos, but never getting tagged themselves. Not being included in a social activity can slowly chip away at one’s self-esteem. This ends up contradicting the goal of prioritizing and ending stigmas surrounding mental health, which also happened with the 2014 attempt.
This kind of social pressure, disguised as “awareness,” undermines the purpose of the campaign. Mental health isn’t a trend. It’s not enough to just simply use the #mentalhealthawareness tag and assume it initiated a movement for change or had any meaningful impact.
People should purposefully help those with mental health issues and make them feel heard by offering their support, actively listening and creating a space where they can feel understood and valued. That should be the goal in promoting open conversations about mental health online — not reposts about everyone’s friends pouring ice water on each other as a fun activity. It’s upsetting that the challenge has devolved into a wave of peer pressure and has rendered the original intent of the campaign meaningless.
Many participants seem to be jumping on the trend, doing it just for the sake of doing so. Having evolved into another form of performative activism, the #SpeakYourMIND challenge has strayed far from supporting mental health advocacy and making a call to action on the issue.
However, despite the air of performance clouding the original intent of the challenge, it did raise nearly $430,000 to date for the fight in normalizing mental health discussions.
Despite this, it is crucial to remember that activism requires direct action and a cause to be fought for. Participating in a challenge does not make one a changemaker or a champion of the cause they claim to stand for.
Instead of participating passively in challenges, people who want to be practitioners of change should engage in direct, civic action. This includes but is not limited to civic engagement at the local, state and federal levels for legislation that directly impacts people with mental illnesses or donating directly to causes and charities that support opening up the discussion on mental health.
Julia Kremenetsky is an Opinion Intern for the spring 2025 quarter. She can be reached at jkremene@uci.edu.
Rebecca Do is an Opinion Staff Writer. She can be reached at dort@uci.edu.