Socially Kind.

Nine year old Dalton Dingus, received over 700,000 Christmas cards this year, not on Facebook, not via email but real honest to goodness cards the post office had to deliver. Dalton living in Kentucky with stage-4 cystic fibrosis wanted to break the Guinness world record for the number of Christmas cards received and show the Christmas spirit was still alive. In the same state, Lane Goodwin, who had been battling a rare form of cancer called Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma since 2010, wanted to receive more than 100,000 likes on his Facebook page, to show there was more kindness in the world than we think. Lane was known for his thumbs up pictures and before long he had thumbs up from Johnny Depp, the US Marine Corp, assorted state police, the 49ers NFL team and a host of celebrities globally. When Lane passed away a month after starting the campaign, 369,000 likes had hit his favourite online site. Both of these campaigns were accomplished by small acts of mobilisation that could only have happened with a worldwide web connected socially by people wanting to show acts of kindness.

Our capacity to do good has expanded exponentially via the web, to such an extent social responsibility means more than just sorting your recyclables and not being mean in business. Today it means much more because we have all become social hubs, with followers, connections and influence over many more people than we could ever have envisaged. We belong to tribes, we belong to communities and we belong to associations that ten years ago you would have had to travel the world to meet. Those relationships can be strong, regardless of whether we have met face to face and with each relationship comes a responsibility, accountability for our actions, a duty of trust and what the Dalai Lama calls his religion, "kindness".

Globally we have seen the formation of "caring groups" who's initiatives are based around kindness and changing the way we look at the world with big Internet eyes. They all use the community model favoured by the Facebook generation enabling small hubs to connect globally as long as the ambition to further the message is altruistically worthy. Groups such as UK based "The Kindness Offensive", known for its large scale random acts of kindness, "Random Hacks of Kindness" a joint initiative between Microsoft, Google,Yahoo!, NASA, and the World Bank working on disaster management and crisis response with volunteer software, the "Singapore Kindness Movement" using public education programs aimed at cultivating kindness and graciousness, "Conscious Acts of Kindness" aiming to empower and inspire people and their communities to kindness and "The One Million Random Acts of Kindness" encouraging people to carrying out a Random Act of Kindness and pass on a RAK Card to the recipient who is then instructed to pass forward their own act of kindness to someone else, are examples of what is achievable on a global platform.

On a singular amplitude, individuals are capable, as noted by Dalton and Lane, to capture the attention of many and make them cognisant of rudimentary movements and bring out the best in people. Celebrities have long been the target for responsibility when it comes to giving and many use the social networks to do their best work via their social media presence. Yet it is the conviction of unknown individuals, such as Jono Fisher, building an online community looking to make Sydney the "Kindness Capital of the World" via the "Wake Up Sydney" site that shows what is possible in the new connection generation. This ability behoves all to give more, become more and grow more.

So from the safety of your PC, "Don't just be yourself - be someone a little nicer".