How to Influence Your Network

Each of us has the opportunity to influence the people in our immediate social network for the benefit of animals, should we choose to invest time and energy into doing so.

And, most people do care about animals (to some extent) and want to avoid causing unnecessary suffering, which means we can help them live more in alignment with values they probably already hold.

Here are a few ideas for how you could do this:

1. Look for petitions or actions that help animals (like those on our Actions page, or those on the website Today For Animals), and then ask your friends or family members if they would like to take an action with you. It could be useful to identify a specific action ahead of time that you think they would be excited to support.
2. Ask your friends, family, or colleagues if they would be interested in watching a pro-animal documentary with you, like The Ghosts in Our Machine (one of my personal favorites). Or, it could be an easier ask to invite them to watch something that focuses on health (like The Game Changers) or the environment (like Cowspiracy). You could make a social night of it, with drinks and popcorn and time to hang out before and after.
3. Ask your workplace (or your family, or religious community) if they'd be willing to do a vegan month together, with a little bit of structured learning throughout the month such as a talk, book club, or documentary screening.
4. Ask your connections to join you at a farmed animal sanctuary for a day, either to take a tour or to volunteer. Farm sanctuaries usually tell people information about where the animals came from, why factory farming is terrible, etc., so the burden wouldn't fall on you to provide that education. You would just have to get people there in the first place.

It can sometimes be easier to influence people if you're simply providing information or nudging them towards experiences, rather than making the case yourself. People usually feel the need to discover truth for themselves and to view themselves as the authors of their own life stories.

If you can provide opportunities for them to "trip over the truth", then that can leave them with the mental agency to feel like they're learning about it on their own.

And these are just a few ideas. There are many more.

The key point is to recognize that you have immense power and influence over your immediate social network. You can expose them to facts, resources, documentaries, sanctuaries, food, experiences, and more. You may be the best positioned person in the whole world to have that conversation with them, or to ask them if they're willing to take a look behind the curtain.

And if each of us takes that responsibility upon ourselves to influence and inspire our immediate social networks, then we can very clearly help the pro-animal movement grow, and our impact comes a little closer to home.

And if not you—then who?