What Finding Nemo got so right about social change

Remember the scene towards the end of Finding Nemo when hundreds of fish, trapped in a fishing net and being hauled towards the surface, realise that the only way out is to "swim down together?" One fish doing it would achieve absolutely nothing, but once the entire school moves in the same direction, the net breaks.

It might be an unexpected place to begin a conversation about social change, but the principle is relevant. At a time when decisions of enormous consequence are being made by governments, billionaires, technology companies and institutions we did not elect, do not work for and cannot remove with a strongly worded Slack message, individual influence can feel laughably small. The reasonable question becomes: what on Earth are any of us actually supposed to do about it? Well, maybe quite a lot.

German-American historian and philosopher Hannah Arendt argued that “power is created when people act together”, and collectively we create markets, workplaces, reputations, voting blocs, cultural norms and social movements. The point is not that every individual action is enormously powerful in isolation, but that enough individual actions moving in roughly the same direction can become very powerful indeed.

So, when everything feels beyond you, here is our guide to finding the influence you actually already have.

1. Use the democratic machinery available

You can write to your MP, for free, while lying on your sofa, which somehow feels like information the younger generations were issued in a leaflet and immediately lost down the back of said sofa.

Your MP represents everyone in their constituency, regardless of whether you voted for them, and contacting them gives you a direct route into the political system that requires considerably less effort than most people imagine. You can raise an issue, ask what they are doing about it, request that they support a campaign or simply make it clear that their constituents are paying attention.

Hundreds or thousands of people independently raising the same issue starts to create a political signal, which is hugely different from everyone agreeing enthusiastically in the group chat.

2. Vote with your wallet

Companies respond to incentives, which means what we buy, cancel, recommend, complain about and refuse to purchase tells them something about what people value and what they will tolerate. Boycotts, buycotts and organised consumer pressure have long been ways of turning individual purchasing choices into reputational and commercial pressure.

Plant-based food is a useful recent example because no single vegetarian walked into Tesco and transformed the supermarket aisle, yet millions of choices gradually created enough demand for businesses to respond. What initially looked like a collection of personal decisions became a real market shift.

The same principle applies far beyond food. Changing a subscription, moving your money, complaining directly to a company, supporting an alternative or asking a brand publicly why it has made a particular decision can all contribute to the commercial signals businesses use to decide what happens next.

3. Find your people

History is a spanner in the works for the idea that ordinary people cannot change anything, because most significant social changes were built by ordinary people doing things that probably felt fairly futile at the time.

Women’s suffrage in Britain developed through decades of organising, lobbying, meetings, campaigning and persistence before some women gained the parliamentary vote in 1918 and equal voting rights with men followed in 1928. While change is actually happening, it doesn't feel like a movie; it looks like another meeting, another letter, another donation or another conversation, until enough of those actions accumulate and the thing once dismissed as unrealistic becomes policy, culture and eventually something important enough to have an Overground line named after the movement.

If something matters to you, find the people who are already working on it, because joining existing momentum is often far more effective than trying to manufacture influence alone.

4. Work out where to put pressure

Not every problem needs a petition and not every issue is solved in Westminster, because power sits in different places depending on what you are trying to change. Employees can challenge workplace policies, shareholders can raise questions, customers can complain, communities can organise, creators and celebrities can decide what they amplify, and people with large platforms can choose to redirect attention towards issues that would otherwise struggle to receive it.

The useful question is therefore not simply, “What can I do?”, but “Who has the power to change this, and what do they respond to?” Sometimes that answer is votes, sometimes it is money, sometimes it is reputation, media attention, employee pressure or sheer numbers.

5. Stay engaged enough to remain relevant

There's a point at which the relentless stream of crises, controversies and breaking-news notifications becomes too much, and temporarily switching off can be completely necessary. Permanently turning a blind eye, however, carries its own cost because culture, politics and business continue changing whether we are paying attention or not.

If you stop understanding what people are angry about, frightened by, organising around or demanding from institutions, you become less able to understand the society your organisation, brand or career actually operates within. To stay engaged doesn't mean carrying every injustice on your shoulders simultaneously; it means understanding enough of the world around you to decide where your attention and influence are actually useful.

You do not have to save everything, join everything or have a perfectly researched position on everything. Choose what matters to you, understand it properly, find where the power sits and decide whether you can contribute, withdraw, question, buy, write, join, organise or amplify.

One email, boycott, conversation or dietary choice will not rescue civilisation on its own, but that has never really been how social change works. Change can happen, you just need enough people to swim down.