La Jolla resident Brenda Fake writes on social media, money and informing local public policy.

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Perhaps nothing illustrates the extraordinary power and the potential danger of social media better than what happened at La Jolla Cove this summer, when a local resident, 18, repeatedly kicked at a sea lion while friends recorded the incident. What happened was wrong, dangerous and illegal. He has since pleaded guilty in federal court to violating the Marine Mammal Protection Act and faces sentencing this fall.

The video of the incident went viral, and what happened next deserves thoughtful examination and gives us insight into how local public policy is increasingly being shaped not by residents and local stakeholders, but by social media and those who influence a much broader public.

Following national outrage, an online petition calling for the permanent closure of The Children’s Pool and La Jolla Cove has attracted more than 39,000 signatures to date. Hundreds of supporters were encouraged to attend a La Jolla Parks & Beaches meeting, where an unusually large audience arrived at a volunteer community forum whose focus is on the everyday work of our parks, beaches and public spaces.

Meanwhile, members of the California Coastal Commission began publicly discussing restricting access to La Jolla Cove.

Consider the sequence: One young man’s obtuse decision to kick a sea lion became a video. The video became viral content. Viral content generated outrage. Outrage propelled an online petition. The petition mobilized an audience. Within weeks, public officials were discussing restricting access to one of California’s most recognizable beaches.

This doesn’t make concerns about wildlife illegitimate. Far from it. The incident demonstrated precisely why stronger education, management and enforcement are needed.

It also demonstrated something else: Public policy should not be made at the speed of social media.

For decades, organizations such as LJP&B have provided a legitimate forum where residents, businesses, recreational users, environmental advocates and city of San Diego representatives debate issues affecting our coastline.

But social media posts have changed that audience, converting a disagreement into an online petition, which can be an extraordinary tool for advocacy but can also compress an extraordinarily complicated public policy question into content designed to attract attention and engagement.

The current La Jolla beach closure campaign provides an important example. Change.org labels the petition calling for permanent closure of Children’s Pool and La Jolla Cove a “Paid partnership” and identifies its creator, Barrett Pall, as a Change Ambassador who receives compensation in connection with the petition.

Let me be clear: none of this invalidates Pall’s views. Nor does it invalidate the concerns of people who signed his petition.

It is, however, highly relevant when tens of thousands of online signatures are presented to public officials as evidence of grassroots public sentiment.

Advocacy and compensated advocacy can coexist. Transparency about the distinction matters.

Further, social media adds a new dimension to La Jolla’s coastline, which was never designed for today’s levels of visitation. The same platforms that beautifully showcase La Jolla also contribute to the pressure placed upon it. A quiet overlook becomes a must-see destination. Wildlife becomes a photo opportunity. Visitors unfamiliar with marine mammal behavior move closer.

The consequences are increasingly visible and when predictable conflicts occur among enormous numbers of visitors, wildlife and an under-resourced public asset, a viral video suddenly becomes evidence that La Jolla and San Diego have somehow failed.

This cycle is not sustainable, and a small seaside community cannot address it alone.

Characterizing concerns raised by La Jolla residents as an effort to restrict access obscures the larger issue.

The challenge is accommodating the impact from enormous public use while protecting the very coastline people are coming to experience. This cannot be reduced to petitions and competing factions.

It takes science, credible data, agreement about the problems we are trying to solve and a willingness to work collaboratively.

It requires infrastructure, education, thoughtful wildlife management and appropriate enforcement. It requires better visitor information and clearer expectations about interacting with wildlife. It requires much better coordination and cooperation among local, state and federal agencies, environmental organizations and community groups.

It demands adequate funding. If San Diego promotes La Jolla as one of the region’s signature visitor destinations, the city must acknowledge the cost of managing this success.

This tends to divide people: You are either for the seals and sea lions or for public access. This is a false choice.

This is not an either/or problem; it is complex and complicated. The better questions are:

• What actually works?
• What can data science tell us about the impacts on this area?
• How do we protect marine mammals while maintaining safe public access?
• How do we educate millions of visitors before an encounter becomes a confrontation?
• How do we provide adequate infrastructure for public spaces receiving visitation vastly disproportionate to the population surrounding them?
• And how do we give officials credible, balanced data so decisions are driven by facts rather than whichever controversy happens to be trending that week?

The current vacuum invites speculation, misinformation and polarized versions of complicated issues. Social media fills that void remarkably quickly.

The La Jolla community groups and institutions have to adapt. This means stronger meeting management, clearer factual information, better data, more effective communication and an understanding that every controversial public discussion matters and can become fodder for a much larger audience.

It means ensuring organized digital campaigns don’t overwhelm the quieter work of residents, environmental advocates, scientists, recreational users, city employees and volunteers who have spent years trying to solve these problems.

Bad behavior, however indefensible, should not become a substitute for thoughtful coastal policy. Nor should tens of thousands of clicks automatically become a mandate.

Public policy must distinguish outrage from evidence, popularity from consensus and attention from solutions. Ultimately, the goal is balance across this fragile coastal ecosystem, wildlife, people and the public spaces we all share.

Our coastline deserves nothing less.

Brenda Fake is a La Jolla resident and a community and environmental advocate who serves as founder and Chair of the La Jolla Coastal Conservancy. The views expressed here are her own.

Editor’s note: lajolla.ca reached out to Pall, who responded but did not answer questions about compliance with Federal Trade Commission regulations for influencers and more.