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Has Social Media Ruined Our Culture

Table of Contents

Introduction
Main body
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Social media can be described as one of the most disruptive technologies since it has caused massive revolutions in social, economic, political, and even cultural aspects of human life. Businesses have used social networking sites as tools for marketing while politicians use them as campaign platforms. From a cultural perspective, it can be argued that social media has caused significant disruptions due to cross-cultural interactions. The effects of social media have been explored in great depth, especially regarding its applications, benefits, and dangers. In this paper, the focus will be on answering the question of whether social media has ruined our culture. The position taken is that social media has not ruined our culture but rather it has brought about intercultural adaptation and convergence of culture. To address this topic, the construct of culture is defined and the influence of social media on culture is explored.

Main body

The question of how to define culture has attracted heated debates as manifested by the multiple attempts to explain this term. Anthropology is among the earliest disciplines to make this attempt from where scholars believed culture to refer to those exotic groups perceived to shave multiple features, customs, and habits (Tierney and Lanford 1). As a result, culture has come to be associated with symbols, values, ideologies, and norms that are created, shared, and maintained within a social setting. The keyword here is social setting because studies of culture have explored multiple contexts, including institutional or corporate culture and national culture. The idea of culture adopted in this paper describes the moral values, behaviors, beliefs, and practices of people shaped by their respective societies. Language, religion, and traditions are part of culture because they are social elements that distinguish between different communities.

Having defined culture, it is important to explore what happens to it when exposed to social media. In this case, it is important to emphasize that social media entails the collection of interactive technologies where people can communicate, interact, and share such media as photos, videos, and written messages (Alamri 80). Considering that social media brings together people from different cultures, it can be argued that users of these sites tend to learn about other cultures and adapt accordingly to make interactions possible. Therefore, the idea of ruining culture can be replaced by the concept of convergence, which can be described as a paradigm shift from cultural specificity. According to Hutchinson, cultural specificity highlights how society is understood from the common meanings of the members (2). In this case, cultures are classified as either high or low. High cultures are those inaccessible by outsiders who have no knowledge of the meanings. Therefore, interactions among the members of high-culture societies can hardly understand one another and make meaningful interactions.

Rather than ruining culture, social media has resulted in a convergence culture. This is a construct that implies that the traditional production and consumption of culture have been disrupted as the old and new media collide. Social media can be described as playing the role of cultural intermediaries whose main concern is the production and consumption of culture. Therefore, the social networking sites are tastemakers positioned between the low and high cultures. The interactions determine what is trending, what is more acceptable, and what cultural knowledge and meaning become a new norm. National cultures have often clashed on social media platforms as people debate what is right or wrong. New meanings have been created, which have adopted a universal outlook. Therefore, it is valid to state that cultural production and consumption have taken a new twist where these processes are not confined within specific societies. Therefore, all those communities with access to social media increasingly adopt the new cultures because it is the only way to feel part of the new world.

Taking the position that social media has ruined our culture would be the same as arguing that cultural values or the societies themselves are static. However, this is hardly the case because societies and cultures keep changing as they adapt to new events in their life. Interactions among societies also take place where cultures adapt accordingly. A good example of how other forms of interaction led to cultural changes in the colonization of the Americans, Asia, and Africa by European powers. In most cases, Christian missionaries were ever-present in the colonies where Christian cultures were spread and traditional ones disbanded. Social media works in similar ways because the sites bring together different cultures where people drop some cultural aspects and adopt others from a different society. Therefore, it is valid to argue that social media is merely a tool for the production and consumption of culture. The rationale is that social networking sites do have cultures of their own. Rather, it is individuals interacting on the platforms that share their cultures (Alamri 80). Therefore, cultural aspects will always keep changing even without social media.

It is also important to highlight the role of social media on cultural and intercultural adaptation. According to Alamri, intercultural adaptation involves the changes in such cultural aspects as behaviors to allow an individual to interact with another from a different culture (78). Adaptation also takes place when a person enters into a new culture where he or she is forced to establish stable and reciprocal functional relationships with people from the new culture. Using social media means coming across multiple cultures where people seek means of sharing mutually beneficial content or engaging each other in meaningful ways. Mutual adaptation will most likely take place where there is no dominant culture that can force change. For example, many social media users can communicate in English and other major languages across the planet. Considering that English is universal, users will often resort to using this language to make communication possible. Additionally, individual cultures can dictate what is said or shared because each individual will still be restrained by their own cultures. However, cultural barriers will most likely be eliminated by users to allow more seamless interaction.

The basic argument is that cultures tend to change as they clash with one another. However, the changes can also be negative, which could be the interpretation of the term ruin for those who believe it to be an effect of social media. Behaviors and activities are part of a culture, which means that negative changes in these aspects have implications on culture. For example, Karem argues that unnecessary and harmful information is shared across platforms, which could be perceived as inappropriate to some people. The youth and children should not be subjected to such information because it may cause a negative change in their behaviors. They may learn to use cursing words and other types of foul language or they might learn to do things that go against their own cultures. Therefore, there is a potential that the types of culture produced and consumed by modern youth are harmful and dangerous.

However, it cannot be blamed on social media that bad cultures are emerging. Whatever people do or say on social platforms is a reflection of their true selves. Bad influence can also be experienced on other types of media or even during physical interaction with people. Social media is simply a platform for people to engage with others from different societies. Whatever effects social media has on culture depend on the users themselves because they determine what can be said, done, and shared based on their own set of cultural values. Culture is dynamic and can be expected to change ad the emergence of new cultures should not be interpreted as ruining culture.

Conclusion

In conclusion, social media has both positive and negative implications on people and their culture. The question addressed is whether such platforms ruin peoples culture where the position taken is that they instead force people to adapt brings about the convergence culture. This position is supported by the argument that social media is a tool for the production and consumption of culture and an intermediary between high and low cultures. Adaptation is necessary due to the intercultural interactions where reciprocal and meaningful relationships have to be established. However, new and negative behaviors may be adopted, which is something that could happen in any form of social setting where peer influence exists.

Works Cited

Alamri, Basim. The Role of Social Media in Intercultural Adaptation: A Review of the Literature. English Language Teaching, vol. 11, n.. 12, 2018, pp. 77-85.

Hutchinson, Jonathon. Moving Convergence Culture Towards Cultural Intermediation: Social Media and Cultural Inclusion. Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, vol. 30, no. 2, 2016, pp. 1-15.

Karem. Social Media Effects on Our Culture, Chapman. 2021. Web.

Tierney, William, and Michael Lanford. Research in Higher Education, Cultural Perspectives. Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions, edited by Jung Shin and Texeira Pedro, Springer, 2018, pp. 1-6.

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