The uptick in racial tensions has far less to do with President Obama and far more to do with your smartphone

After months of protests and outcry over the deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott and, now, Freddie Gray in Baltimore (MD), even impartial observers might wonder if something unique to President Barack Obama's tenure as president is inspiring more unrest. And the answer is yes -- but it doesn't have anything to do with President Obama. Social media is instantaneous. Twitter can be and has been used to inform, organize and inflame. Stories and photographs and videos created by people on the scene using the portable studios they carry in their pockets leap onto the Internet and spread in less time that it would have taken the man who filmed the Rodney King beating to rewind the video cassette.

These are innovations that happened largely while Barack Obama was president. President Obama has been the first social media president and the first iPhone president. And that, far more than President Obama's politics or his racial identity, has been why his second term has been heavy with unrest. If John McCain had won election in 2008 and been reelected, it's hard to believe that Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice and Freddie Gray would still be alive. And it's hard to believe that their deaths wouldn't similarly have gained international attention. Both the problems that led to their deaths and the ad hoc media network that informed us about them would still exist.