Social media has been a major part of our daily lives.

It totally effected our culture in positive and negative ways.

There are so many positive impacts of social media on our culture. Social media increased the connections
between people and created an environment in which you can share your opinions, pictures and lots of stuff.
Social media improved creativity and social awareness for our society by interacting with other people and sharing
new ideas and opinions. It is also important for any business because at some point, you need to use social media
in your business. Social media developed international business and marketing. People prefer to buy stuff online.
Social media created an opportunity to widen your world and make new friends from other countries. It is easier to
learn about breaking news on social media because it has unlimited access and flexibility. On the other hand, social
media has influenced our culture in negative ways. People can share whatever they want to on social media and
some of them might be inappropriate pictures. People has become more conservative about each other’s point of
view. People started to argue about each other’s perspective related to political view, religion, social rights and
culture. Social media had negative effect on youth. It reduced physical activities. People prefer to sit all day in front
of computers and chat. Social media also has influenced youth in negative ways. Kids might be affected and
manipulated by some sites in which there is inappropriate information. The ugly part of social media is that there is
tons of unnecessary information shared by people and also bullying and harassment on social media has been
increased. People can make brutal and negative comments about anything and anyone. Social media has good,
bad and ugly impacts on our culture.

Social Media Growth in the Philippinesin Brief

According to We Are Social's GlobalDigital Report 2019, there are 76 million
active Filipino social mediausers – 71 percent of the entire population – who
spend an average of four hours a day on different social media platforms.
Global data

The number of people around theworld who use a mobile phone increased by
100 million in 2018, with the global total reaching more than 5.1 billion users
by January 2019. This figure brings worldwide mobile penetration to 67
percent – more than two-thirds of the total globalpopulation
 MENU

 Frank Furedi
 Sociologist, commentator and author
ARTICLE

The Aspen Institute 16 February 2015 EDUCATION AND CULTURE

How the Internet and social media are

changing culture
Throughout human history new technologies of communication have had a significant
impact on culture. Inevitably in the early stages of their introduction the impact and the
effect of such innovations were poorly understood. Plato used the voice of Socrates to
raise the alarm about the perils posed by the invention of writing and of reading. In his
dialogue Phaedrus, Plato denounced writing as inhuman and warned that writing
weakened the mind and that it threatened to destroy people’s memory. Also the invention
of the printing press was at its time perceived as a threat to European culture, social order
and morality. “Ever since they began to practice this perverse excess of printing books,
the church has been greatly damaged,” lamented Francisco Penna, a Dominican defender
of the Spanish Inquisition. Similar concerns have also been raised in the aftermath of the
ascendancy of the electronic media—television in particular has been often represented
as a corrosive influence on public life.
Plato’s reservation about the influence of new media on culture continues to influence the
current deliberation on the influence of the Internet and of social media. For example,
Maryanne Wolf, an American cognitive neuroscientist and the author of Proust and the
Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain frequently draws on Socrates to
reinforce her argument about the debilitating effect of the Internet on the so-called
reading brain. Her extensive discussion of Socrates is linked to her conviction that his
warnings about the risks posed by the written text are particularly relevant for thinking
about the transition from print and digital media and its impact on children. She wrote
that “Socrates’ perspective on the pursuit of information in our culture haunts me every
day as I watch my two sons use the Internet to finish a homework assignment, and then
they tell me they ‘know all about it.’”
Apprehensions about the impact of the social media on children’s brains readily
intermesh with alarmist accounts of predatory hackers and pedophiles, internet trolls,
identity theft, phishing scams, Trojan horses, viruses and worms. The Internet serves as
metaphor through which wider social and cultural anxieties are communicated. That is
why for so many of its critics its impact on offline culture appears in such a negative
light.
Predictably the Internet is also an object of glorification by its technophile advocates.
Time and again the public is informed that the Internet is transforming human life
towards a more enlightened and creative existence. The public is constantly told that Big
Data and the Internet of Things are about to revolutionize human existence. Claims that
digital technology will fundamentally transform education, the way we work, play and
interact with one another suggest that these new media will have an even greater impact
on our culture than the invention of writing and reading.
There is little doubt that the digital technology and social media has already a significant
impact on culture. Towards the end of the 19th century artists sough to capture their
subjects through portraits of individuals who were absorbed in the act of reading a book.
Today, it is the pictures of people standing in the middle of a crowd, captivated by what
they are reading on their smartphone that best symbolizes the 21st century subject.
Technology and Culture
The Internet and social media are very powerful tools that can influence and shape human
behavior. The social media has played a significant role in recent outbreaks of social
protest and resistance. The mushrooming of Occupy protests, the Arab Spring, the
mobilization of resistance against the Government of the Ukraine or in Hong Kong was
heavily dependent on the resources provided by the social media. Many observers have
concluded that in a networked world the social media possesses the potential to promote
public participation, engagement and the process of democratizing public life.
That the Internet and the social media are powerful instruments for mobilization of
people is not in doubt. However, it is not its own technological imperative that allows the
social media to play a prominent role in social protest. Rather the creative use of the
social media is a response to aspirations and needs that pre-exist or at least exist
independently of it. This technology ought to be perceived as a resource that can be
utilized by social and political movements looking for a communication infrastructure to
promote their cause.
Take the example of radicalized jihadist youth in the West. In many cases the Internet has
been represented as a powerful technology that incites young Muslims to become
radicalized. Often the term“sudden radicalization” is used to highlight the power of social
media to swiftly convert otherwise confused young Muslims into hardened extremist
jihadists. Yet there is considerable evidence to suggest that young Muslims who go
online to visit jihadist websites have gone through a process of self-radicalization. They
are already drawn towards radical Islam and are looking for a medium to express their
ideals and interact with those who share their sentiments. What these websites do is to
affirm, deepen or harden sentiments that their visitors already possess. Their experience
of the Internet may encourage young Muslims to move in unexpected radical directions
but these individuals have already developed attitudes that disposed them to embark on
such a journey.
The relationship between the social media and radicalization is both an interactive and
dynamic one. The social media provides a medium through which pre-existing sentiments
can gain greater clarity, expressions and meaning. It provides a medium for the kind of
interaction that can throw up new ideas, new symbols, new rituals and new identities. In
this sense it has helped stimulate the emergent Western jihadist youth sub-culture and
arguably its online expressions have exercised an important influence on its offline
trajectory.
The Internet and Everyday Culture
The culture of everyday life has become entwined with the Internet. The flourishing of
online dating offers a striking example of how the construction of significant
relationships can draw on the resources provided by the social media. In many Western
societies online dating has served as a provisional solution to the problems thrown up by
a more individuated and segmented social setting. The stimulus for the cultivation of
these online relations is the search for solutions to some of the problems confronting life
in the offline world. However, the growing popularity of virtual encounters has had a
significant impact on the way that men and women conduct their everyday affairs. The
intermeshing of the virtual with the “real” is part of the reality of contemporary culture.
The influence of the Internet has been most significant in the way it has transformed the
lives of young people. Their digital bedroom symbolizes a childhood that is significantly
mediated through the social media, mobile phones and the Internet. Friendship interaction
and peer-topeer relations are increasingly conducted online or through text messaging.
Such interactions have had major cultural consequences. Texting and online
communications have influenced the evolution of language. They have thrown up new
rituals and symbols and have had an important impact on people’s identity—the young in
particular. Mediated exchanges often shape and reinforce people’s status and identity.
Consequently what happens to people through their online interactions really matters to
the way that people perceive themselves offline.
As with the case of political mobilization, the digitalization of childhood can be
interpreted as a response to a pre-existing need for new technologies of interaction. The
digital bedroom emerged as the outcome of the growing tendency to relocate children’s
activities from the outdoor to the indoor. Risk-averse attitudes which verge on paranoia
emerged as one the defining features of contemporary child-rearing culture.
Apprehensions about children’s health and safety, particularly regarding sex predators
have led to new limits imposed on children’s freedom to explore the outdoors. This
confinement of children indoors has been associated with the growth of a phenomenon
frequently described as the bedroom culture. So the main driver of this process was not
digital technology and the social media, but the prior development of an indoor childhood
culture.
Bedroom culture is the product of two interrelated and sometimes contradictory
developments. On the one hand the confinement of children indoors is the outcome of
adult initiative. Surveys frequently attest to the fact that children would rather be
outdoors and in particular they would rather be playing with their friends. For example, a
series of interviews carried out with English children indicated that they would “prefer to
be outdoors: hanging on street corners, shopping, at the movies, or playing sport, than
indoors using the computer.” At the same time the specific form that bedroom culture
assumes is frequently shaped by children’s desire to create their own space and enjoy a
measure of independence from adult control. Arguably it is through the medium of digital
technology that some people seek to regain some of the freedoms that they have lost.
Bedroom culture represents the antithesis of the family-centered television viewing in a
common room. Media usage has become increasingly privatized and children play an
influential role in the construction of the new media home environment. Many children’s
bedrooms are media-rich environments—a growing proportion of children have
computers in bedroom with online access. Highly motivated to create a separate
autonomous space where children can experiment and develop their personality,
youngsters seek to evade parental control. The flourishing of bedroom culture encourages
the privatization of media usage as young people attempt to forge a world that is distinct
from that of their parents. Through pursuing the project of self-socialization, young
people attempt to personalize their media to ensure that it directly relates to their
interests. This project tends to be pursued in isolation from other family members.
The repositioning of childhood into the indoors has not led to the consolidation of
intergenerational ties. On the contrary, the rise of bedroom culture reflects the trend
towards the privatization and individualization of family life. Children regard the new
media as vehicles for setting themselves off from their elders and for attempting to forge
links with their peers. They also seek to protect their interaction space from the
monitoring of adults. From this perspective, media technology is not something to be
shared but is something to be customized, personalized and consumed privately out of the
sight of adults.
Through the Internet the segmentation of social experience is refracted and given greater
momentum through its powerful technological dynamic. This amplification and
intensification of social trends constitutes the immediate impact of the Internet on the
everyday culture. If the experience of printing serves as a precedent, it is likely that
digital technology will not simply intensify prevailing cultural trends but also provide
resources for reinterpreting its meaning.
FIRST PUBLISHED: THE ASPEN INSTITUTE, 16 FEBRUARY 2015.
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RESEARCH THEMES
ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND FREE SPEECH
AUTHORITY
EDUCATION AND CULTURE
ENVIRONMENT
FIRST WORLD WAR
LITIGATION CULTURE
MORAL CRUSADES
PARENTING
POLITICS AND
THE ECONOMY
POPULATION
RACE
RELIGION AND BELIEF
RISK AND FEAR
SOCIETY AND CIVILITY
THERAPY CULTURE

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