The Age of Pop Culture
The social media age is upon us and is taking over our lives.
We spend a majority of our day using technology and it has been harming our human interactions. The relationships of our generation have been harmed with our reliance for technology and social media to keep up with that is popular rather than keeping up with each other. The average time spent on each visit to Facebook alone is 22 minutes, and usually if a person is visiting their social media sites, will visit others and will extend this time for social media in general. Walking down a hallway or looking around the lunch room, a majority of people have their phones out rather than talking to each other about their day or about their interests. People are even having their cell phones out during class and are distracted by texting someone who is in another class rather than focusing on what their class is teaching.
We believe that we all have good social skills due to our use of such sites and devices, but in reality, our social skills are being damaged by our use of these types of technology. We rely on our cell phones to have our “humanly contact,” but in fact are only having a conversation with a screen. We can’t see the person or hear their voice; we only see a screen and reply to what it provides us. We can’t even resist the temptation when we are doing something dangerous that requires a person’s full attention: driving. In 2011, 23% of motor-vehicle accidents were cell phone related. The people couldn’t resist the temptation or turn off their phone for the short time they have to be in a car to be able to keep full focus.
When on these social media sites, we are given direct access to many pop culture stars or influences. We spend too much time checking in on our stars or seeing what is in. We look at magazines to keep up with the trends and end up being influenced by images of impossible expectations for beauty. These magazines claim that to be “perfect” or to be “beautiful” that we have to be stick thin and look sickly, which causes people to want to accomplish this goal to be what that believe will be considered “pretty” by the public. This disease will take over somebody’s life, become fixated on losing weight, but no matter how much is lost, will never be enough.
These images have spread to further reaches than just our magazines. They appear on our social media sites, on the ads that are chosen specifically for us to show up on our internet based on our past history on the internet. We are constantly bombarded with photo-shopped people in the trendiest clothes and with the coolest styles that we are almost becoming immune to such images. We expect them to be the norm on sites and expect to see them all of the time, but these images should stay in their magazines where people have the choice to look at them if they want to and those who don’t want to get involved can resist the temptation to buy or order such magazines. We should not fixate on such images as to what we believe to be cool or pretty when such visions are usually unattainable or very unhealthy to attain.
All people are built differently and there is usually very little that can be done with a person’s image due to this restraint. Pop culture should be more wary of this fact and depict beauty in a variety body types and skin colors and styles. Not everything created as trendy will be fitting for everyone in the world and magazines need to be more aware of this idea. Overall, pop culture, though fun and can be helpful and be entertaining, can be harmful to people’s humanly interactions and overall health. With our reliance to look at a screen to get updates on the world rather than to look up at each other for updates on each other, we hurt our humanly interactions and hurt our social skills. We only post the best of our selves, but we all have bad days and when we give time for actual human interactions rather than hiding in our phones, our friends can help us.
We can know each other better and deeper and share more about ourselves. Our generation would be closer overall and stronger in the future. We also need to change the standards for advertising and let people be more comfortable in their own body’s and to be healthier mentally for many people. Overall, we need to learn to put down our phones, get away from Facebook, Twitter, and advertising of unrealistic standards and build our own relationships.
