Social Media: The True Enforcer of Conformity We are being watched every day. People watch us just about from the time we wake up until the time we go to sleep. When we think about this, generally we think of people stalking us or observing us when we are most vulnerable; but in reality most of the time we are being surveyed in a little different way. When we post things on social media everyone can see it; sure there’s ways to limit who can see what you post, but it will always be out there in one way or another. Social media is a way for all of our friends and family catch up and see what all is going on in our lives. It’s also a place those friends and family and even our future bosses will go to see how mature we are and to see what kind of a person we are. This can also be a way to keep us in line and conform to “normative behavior.” When everyone close to us, particularly adults in our lives who we want to impress see, everything we post on social media, we’re more inclined to be respectful and mature in our posts. We see when people are being surveyed by people who judge them how much they change. When they’re being watched by someone with authority people behave much differently. They follow rules a lot better; because, they know they are being watched, judged, or possibly even punished. This allows us to enforce conformity without it even seeming like its being enforced; because, people become self-conscious when they’re being watched. It is better for all of society when we can allow people to feel like they’re being watched at all times. When people feel this way, they follow the rules better and are overall better citizens. How does an awareness of “surveillance,” for instance, impact individual users? When... ... middle of paper ... ...ething that goes against the morals our parents implanted into our brains, we aren’t going to do it with them watching right over our shoulder. And if we do partake in this deed, we still feel like our parents know even if they were nowhere near the occurrence. This is no different than our social media use. If we feel as though we’re being watched and judged by people looking at our feed, then we’re more likely to tread carefully with what we post and post only things that are appropriate for our audience. Social media polices itself with the help of its users to enforce conformity. This makes the community better along with the individual person’s life better because it improves their self-image, and it makes the content on social media cleaner and more appropriate for everyone’s eyes. The self-monitoring of social media is better for the improvement of life.
The article ‘Web of Risks’ by Brad Stone, is about how young adults misuse social media and there are consequences. Cameron Walker, a sophomore at Fisher College had organized a petition dedicated to getting a campus security guard fired and put it on Facebook. Marc Zuckerberg designed Facebook in 2003 and it is a well-known website used worldwide. On the Facebook page Walker wrote that the security guard harassed students and needed to be eliminated. His plan backfired due to his use of wording and it came off threatening so he was expelled. Social media is looked at as a way to express yourself. Different social networks are used such as Facebook, Bebo, and Myspace. On these sites sometimes personal life is published,
Using the informal tone he enhances his argument by providing several thought-provoking statements that allow the reader to see the logic in the article, “Social media is designed for the information shared on it to be searched, and shared- and mined for profit… When considering what to share via social media, don 't think business vs. personal. Think public vs. private. And if something is truly private, do not share it on social media out of a misplaced faith in the expectation of privacy” (134). The reader should agree with Edmond that when posting or being a part of the social media bandwagon, you’re life and decisions will be up for display. Moreover, the business vs. personal and public vs. private point is accurate and logical, because evidently if you post something on any social media outlet you should expect that anyone and everyone can see it, regardless of your privacy settings. Edmond highlights that Facebook along with other social networking sites change their privacy settings whenever they please without
“The standards of what we want to keep private and what we make public are constantly evolving. Over the course of Western history, we’ve developed a desire for more privacy, quite possibly as a status symbol…”(Singer) Technological change leads to new abuses, creating new challenges to security, but society adapts to those challenges. To meet the innate need for privacy, we learn what to reveal and where, and how to keep secret what we don't want to disclose. “Whether Facebook and similar sites are reflecting a change in social norms about privacy or are actually driving that change, that half a billion people are now on Facebook suggests that people believe the benefits of connecting with others, sharing information, networking, self-promoting, flirting, and bragging outweigh breaches of privacy that accompany such behaviours,”(Singer) This is obvious by the continuous and unceasing use of social media platforms, but what needs to be considered is that this information is being provided willingly. “More difficult questions arise when the loss of privacy is not in any sense a choice.”(Singer) When the choice to be anonymous it taken away through social media, the person loses the ability to keep their personal information
In Is Anything Private Anymore, Sean Flynn gives a central message of his text that society does not have privacy anymore. We may think some things about us are “anonymous”, but in real it is not. Nothing stays as a secret, there is always someone who sees or hears you. Bankson who got documented twice shows us that nothing stays anonymous. The article claims that we are not only being watched outside but on social media as well and everything we do on internet is being monitored. Ina modern world we live right now, having privacy is impossible because by our name and phone number our information can be accessed. Social network may seem fun but it may affect you in many ways in future. “You learn why posting pictures of you riding the mechanical
She starts off her argument with her own personal experience then transitions into an example of a girl she interviewed named Caitlyn. She uses Caitlyn as an example to show that teenagers start posting their everyday lives from a young age. Caitlyn likes to post her blogs, her photos and documentaries about her school on the internet for the world to see. She has the characteristics from the author’s previous argument that she thinks she has an invisible audience on the internet and because of this she posts her daily routine. When Caitlyn took a trip to Manhattan, she posted her pictures and “memories of her time in New York [which] are [now] stored both in her memory, where they will decay, and on her site” (Nussbaum 3). During this argument, the author only uses examples of her personal interviews; she does not have any facts from credible resources. If the author where to include more personal examples of teenagers, it would not give the reader the suspicion on whether or not this is true for all youth. If teenagers thought about the consequences of posting online their daily lives, than many people would not do it. By taking this argument into consideration many people would be more careful about what they post. The online world can be a scary place because pedophiles can now have easy access to photos and teenagers accounts and pretend to be someone they are not. Young adults
As it was mentioned in the article, “Let kids Run Wild Online”, kids want to have freedom and a place place where they can have some privacy, a place where they can explore the world and themselves without their parents haunting them. Now, we don’t see as many kids in the streets due to the dangers they can encounter. Therefore, teens use internet to have some freedom and some time for themselves. Now days, parents concentrate a lot of their attention in their kids which is completely understandable considering their concern about their kids’ safety. Although, I agree that parents need to give their kids their space in the internet considering that the internet is now an important source of freedom and sometimes the only source of freedom for teenagers. Over protective parents also harm their kids by not letting them learn from their mistakes, kids are not developing the skills to confront the struggles of the world, and kids won’t really know what their personality without their parents watching them all the time. The best way parents can help their children is not by motoring what they do in the internet but by having good communication with their kids and by teaching them values and morals because their kids will encounter dangers wherever they go and parents can’t be with them all the time. Therefore, parents must teach their kids what to do in a situation of danger or even how to avoid those situations.
James Franco says “Attention seems to be the name of the game when it comes to social networking”, I agree with this as all teenagers in today’s society seem to want is attention. This affects them by distancing themselves from who they truly are and what they believe in as they are very focused on trying to give the people only what they like to see. For example, the Snapchat article states, “Teens have this fear that people might be doing something cooler than us, so we feel like we need to make it seem like we are doing something even cooler.” Teenagers go that extra step of doing something that they might not agree with just to feel good about getting other’s attention. This has affected teenagers because they have forgotten of expressing what they believe in or what they
Therefore, Facebook is powered by a curiosity that feeds one’s desire to know about their friends and therefore perform surveillance activities. We are all encouraged to be “Facebook stalkers” and to expose ourselves, getting rid of our privacy and making room for visibility. Social media is more than keeping touch with friends and family, it is about curiosity, surveillance and control. We are constantly being monitored and monitoring others. Social media has made us willingly become visible to anyone who wants to observe, putting our privacy at stake, as we also reinforce this behaviour by doing the same to others. It has become a perfect monitoring system, as everyone is aware of what everyone else is doing with their lives in a very entertaining and addictive manner.
People need people they need ways to connect with other communities and to be able to express themselves. Structural functionalism theory is based as how society is a complex system who’s parts work together to promote solidarity and stability (wikipedia.org). Since, people have the need to connect with others social media provides the means to do so. Extroverted people will have a greater geographic expansion of their social circle. Introverts are more willing to meet people online because of the sense of security it provides. Social media is growing at such a fast rate and the availability of high speed internet, everything is instantaneous. This can cause a problem with learning characteristics such as patience, narcissism, self-esteem issues or personal filters. The more time people are spending on social media sites, the more they are forgetting how to behave in real life. Social media allows for everything unfiltered. In real life there are rules to society to make sure people can peacefully live amongst each other. In order for society to cohabitate peacefully there must be a willingness to compromise among people. With the evolution of social media’s virtual communities where everything is a free forum, people are now choosing to not follow the basic rules of society, hence, the increase in crime and lack of
Social media companies have complete control a their users information and can do what they want with it. Now if those companies went spreading the information, no one would use their sites but they can make changes to privacy setting that make it easier for anyone to view information of other users. For example, Facebook has privacy settings so your information is not out for public viewing, but a while back they changed the default privacy setting to make all your information viewable to the public unless you changed it. There was an uproar and everyone felt they were trying to be sneaky about it because they did not give any notice when they did it, but Facebook claimed they were not trying to do anything fallacious. Social media companies have to be careful when doing anything with privacy settings because people get extremely defensive regarding their information. There is also a level of comfort that comes with age. The older generations have no trust when it comes to putting their information online. Most feel as if they are being tricked in some way. But the generation kids are growing up in now, all their trust is put in the internet. Kids and young adults will put all their information online because that is how the world functions. In today’s world, if you are not putting all your information online and using your phone and laptop to get everything done, you are inefficient. And this
A new age has developed and society is altering to adapt to new forms of technological communication. Through the use of the vast Internet through the use of social networking, image boards, blog sites and news media, society is altering in a way never seen before. Over the past couple of decades, the use of the Internet has expanded and grown exponentially as new technology develops. Since the introduction of social networking as well as alternative news media sites, the way people interact and communicate has altered. New ideas and discussions have been created. With all of this freedom granted with easy access, society might take advantage of the ability to speak freely as an anonymous source. The personal obsession with imagery is lost because the users of the Internet are judging based on a screen name and nothing more. The ability to have an alternate persona allows users a freedom of speech and thought never granted before and can be erased and created with only a few clicks. We see that true opinion and reasoning among society varies on the anonymity of the commenter, where as one is more likely to be more holistic and honest if their imagery isn’t entirely threatened by the judgment of their peers, but because of many networking sites, individualism is lost; specifically, society’s lack of expression of true free thought and in reality because of social constraints.
Medicine as a Form of Social Control This critique will examine the view that medicine is a form of social control. There are many theorists that have different opinions on this view. This critique will discuss each one and their different views. We live in a society where there is a complex division of labour and where enormous varieties of specialist healing roles are recognised.
Every day we meet a lot of people have seen their behavior, listen to what they say, think about them, try to understand them. We feel that we not only see what color eyes and hair of a person, tall or not, thin or full, but also sad to him or fun, smart or stupid it, solid or not and so on. Over the past decade, social media has seen growth to the point where it is reflects in our daily lives and even the lives of those who choose not to use it. Anywhere we go online, there are always buttons to click so that you can share something on Facebook or pin it to your Pinterest account.
Our society today has become dependent on social media to entertain, excite, and inform each other on the newest and latest hot topics of today’s world. Some people cannot go as long as an hour without checking their social media websites whether it is on the phone, computer, Ipad, or any other electronic devise with internet. The creators of social media have made it easier to recognize and draw the user in with notifying pop-ups every time something new happens in the cyber world. The easier it gets, the more addicting it makes it to check every second. Also, it’s not only the youth and teenagers using these social media cites; it also claims adults as well. One of the main reasons people make social media accounts is because people are nosey about other people’s lives. They get a social media page such as Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram to monitor people and see what they are missing out of in the world. People post pictures to their “page” for everyone to see how good they look or how funny they are. Since everyone has a social media account, others feel obligated to make one, two, or even three accounts. What used to be rare is now typical for a normal person to have at l...
Even though people have different opinions on whether social media has a positive or negative impact on society, it can be said that social media has a positive effect on society as a whole because it lets people communicate with each other easily, it has been said to improve education among children, and has helped improve the economy in the world. One of the main reasons why social media has positively affected our society is because of how it has made communicating with people much easier. “Today, four out of five active internet users maintain at least one social media profile” (Moe, 3). Using these websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and etc., people talk about everything with anyone from what they are planning to do, to what they are eating and much more (Moe, 24). We can also send private messages to other users of these websites about personal matters that you just want to discuss with them.