I was wrong to be sarcastic and judgmental about the Ice Bucket Challenge

I thought it was all vanity, but after hearing that the challenge has funded a medical breakthrough, I realise I just misunderstood how charity is done in the social media age

Even George Bush got involved with the Ice Bucket Challenge (George W.Bush/Facebook)

Two summers ago you may remember pouring ice cold water over yourself and uploading a video of it to Facebook. I had a very different experience. I remember scrolling through Facebook and sarcastically rolling my eyes for two months, denouncing people for so easily jumping on a bandwagon.

But the Ice Bucket challenge raised £87m in over just eight weeks. One in six Britons took part, more than 17m videos were uploaded to Facebook, and were watched by 440 million people worldwide.

The money raised helped to fund groundbreaking genetic research for the ALS Association, which researches the progressive neurodegenerative disease also known as motor neurone disease (MND), including the largest ever study of inherited ALS.

I’m nursing my embarrassment with the consolation that I wasn’t the only person who saw the challenge merely as a vapid excuse to show off on the back of a good cause.

Donating to charity, I thought, is supposed to be a deferential, humble act, and not something to be muddied with social media frivolity for the sake of a few likes. To tell the world of your good deed was to negate it, I thought to myself as I signed out of Facebook – firmly warm and dry – and willed the ability to forget my password.

But seeing the impact of the money raised by the challenge has made me realise: so what if ego overtook altruism? Social media can bring out the worst in us, but when makes this much difference, naysayers like myself must now swallow their pride.

The #nomakeupselfie, which came just before the ice bucket challenge, raised £2m for breast cancer. Yet this was another campaign criticised by people (myself included) for exploiting a good cause for vanity.

But these trends prove that self-promotion, selflessness and “slacktivism” – however many shares, videos and donations where this played a part – don’t need to be mutually exclusive.

Whatever the reasons behind it, whether it was more about us or the disease, who cares if it makes that much difference to medical research?

These campaigns have changed the way we engage with good causes. In the social media age, we no longer give money to charity quietly and modestly. And if a fundraising trend can appeal to the reasons we’re online in the first place – to feel part of something, to connect and, yes, to massage our ego once in a while – then of course it should exploit this.

No doubt we will have more online fundraising campaigns in the future that engage us with challenges we can’t resist taking part in. But while they may be vanity projects, I will no longer roll my eyes and disparage those taking part.

A bit of extra narcissism on your newsfeed can simply be a means to an end. There’s nothing wrong with charitable giving involving a laugh if it helps to raise money. After all, it’s the ALS Association who’s laughing now.