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Technology Today:

In this specific chapter titled “Sociological Concerns of the 21st Century” I found it one of the most easy to identify with and relate the concepts to myself. One of the first concepts I identified with was related to technology and social media. The chapter mentions what is called the “digital divide” this idea has been around since the beginning of the millennium, and it relates to the uneven access to technology among different races, classes, and geographical areas. In the modern day, technology is now widely used throughout our personal and social lives as well as throughout our everyday education. The digital divide relates to how there are differences in technology use and ownership based on race, class, and age. I happen to be very blessed and have always had access to a computer, the internet and a phone growing up, and I can not imagine what it would be like to do things without such easy access to various forms of technology. Our textbook makes us look into if the use of technology has a positive or negative effect, which made me look at myself and how I personally use social media and technology. New media is a concept in which I have a personal relation to because of how much I use different social medias and streaming websites. New media is described as encompassing all interactive forms of information exchange; including, social networking, blogs, podcasts, and virtual worlds. It is extremely common in the lives of people all around the world and will continue to grow in popularity. Many people use things such as netflix, hulu, and amazon prime as a way to stream movies and tv shows. Youtube is another prevalent form of social media and video watching, in fact, it is reported that there are 1 billion unique viewers every month, this is in comparison to the 3 billion that access the internet itself, this just goes to show how popular the use of new media has become.

Life- Changing Functions is an example of how media and many forms of technology do indeed entertain us and provide us with a platform for not only commercialization but can socialize us as well. These can be a good thing sometimes but there are many examples on how we have become reliant and addicted to our phones. There is one quote that stood out to me in particular because it hit too close to home. It was stated that “When it comes to cell phones, 67 percent of users check their phones for messages or calls even when the phone wasn’t ringing. In addition, 44% of cell owners have slept with their phone next to their bed because they wanted to make sure they didn’t miss any calls, text messages, or other updates during the night and 29% of cell phone owners as “something they can’t imagine living without” (Smith 2012). Although these statistics reflect that the majority of people relates to this cell phone dependency, I hate that I am included within them all. I personally see both the positive and negative effects that technology and social media present us with. I didn’t get a phone until I was in middle school but the younger generations have access to technology from such a young age that it is concerning. For example, my younger cousins who are only about 7 years old, know how to use an ipad and iphone just as well as I can if not better. I think this is a bad change from how my generation grew up. Children that are born in the 90s have a unique outlook and experience with technology because it was not readily available or normal for us to play on these devices, instead we played outside with our friends and toys; but we also were introduced to various forms of technology as we got older and a more appropriate age. There are studies that suggest the rising obesity rate is in direct correlation to the decrease in physical activity that is caused by an increase in use of some forms of technology. There is no doubt that technology is changing the way that we live.

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I find this graphic of statistics to be very scary considering it is based on children ages 0-8 years old. I think that is far to young for a child to be on technology consistently and that it can affect them negatively in the long run. 

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Young children playing with an ipad instead of being outside on the playground running around with toys and interacting with other children. 

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Concepts I Personally Relate To:

One thing these modules went into depth about is the concept of marriage and family and how they have changed over the years. Marriage and family are two common and key structures throughout most societies, however in the past few decades times are changing, and so are how we we define a “family.” There are many nontraditional families around the world and it is becoming more and more common every day. Although there are a lot of different opinions of what exactly constitutes a family, a study showed that 60 percent of U.S. respondents agreed that if you consider yourself a family, you are a family.

The traditional idea of a family consists of a mom, a dad, and at least one child, this was reflected heavily throughout television and entertainment over the years. We now have began to see a change throughout the way television shows portray a family. Our textbook mentions that within the past ten years we have seen a significant shift towards more non traditional tv families, one in particular, Disney’s Hannah Montana. Growing up I loved to watch this show, if you are unfamiliar with it, she is raised in a single parent household with her father and older brother. This was always something I felt I could relate to because I have lived with only my dad since I was about 12 years old. Most of my friends parents were still married or they had step parents making up the other half, so it was nice that Disney portrayed a different, non traditional family structure I felt like I could relate to.

In the section titled “Children of Divorce and Remarriage” I found it very interesting to read more in depth about the effects that a divorce has on the child because I felt like I was actually learning quite a bit about myself. It states that divorce is often justified by the notion that children are better off in a divorced family than in a family with parents who do not get along. I can see how people can see this to be true, and at one point, I did as well; I remember wishing that my parents would just get divorced so I could stop hearing the fights and we could all finally be happy. There is long term studies that show evidence of this to be entirely untrue, divorce causes a lot of stresses, emotionally, and financially. Now that I am older and can look back on all that has happened, I wish my parents would have just stayed together, I think overall the divorce made them both more angry than they ever were before, there is no level of respect between the two of them because they no longer live in the same house and have to answer to each other. So I guess in the long run, they both became more unhappy, and drag my brother and I through it even more playing “telephone” between the two of them. I also think divorce adds so much stress on everyone involved due to financial issues, divorce is EXPENSIVE and money problems are never fun to face. Often times I wonder how much easier life would have been if my parents just decided to stay in a loveless marriage almost cohabiting as if they were roommates.

When learning about work in the United States, the book talks about the ways in which the job market changes such as, automation, outsourcing, and the recession. Unfortunately the recession is something I am all too familiar with. In 2008 we faced The Great Recession, a global economic downturn that devastated world financial, banking, and real estate industries. It was the longest period of economic decline since the Great Depression in the 1930’s and resulted in millions of people to lose their jobs, homes, and life savings. I still remember the day my dad sat my brother and I down and told us life was about to change for us, although he was actively looking for a new job the entire time, it was extremely hard to find a new one, if one at all. It would be two years before he landed a new job, this one only paying half of what he used to make. We, like millions of others, lost our house, and our way of life changed tremendously.

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I found this TED talk to be extremely interesting to me. I wrote about the specific part of the chapter titled “Children of Divorce and Remarriage.” and I relate to it heavily. I was looking for media or examples to include in my final project and I came across this video, I have watched a lot of TED talks throughout school but I was more invested in this than any other. I hope to be able to send this link to both of my parents for them to view, I am actually really grateful for this project because It has helped me learn more about myself. 

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Sociological Concepts In Today’s Society:

After going through the external reading links in both modules again i decided on three specific concepts that most closely align with my personal and social experiences. Growing up and attending public schools my whole life I was always surrounded by various groups of people from all walks of life. Throughout this time I learned a lot about not only people who were different from me but who I was and where I “fit in.” In Edwin Sutherland’s theory of differential association he points out that individuals learn behaviors, sometimes deviant, from those close to them and provide a model and opportunity for these behaviors. He states that the deviance is less of a personal choice and more of a result of differential socialization processes, for example a tween whose friends are sexually active is more likely to view sexual activity as acceptable and normal. One thing I remember being specifically shocked by was how lenient some of my middle school peers parents were, for example there was always a group of girls that were allowed to hang out with the older boys and unsupervised at that. Due to this lack of supervision the girls were far more advanced than most, and all viewed sexual activity at such a young age to be normal and accepted. The next concept I chose was one’s sexual orientation. A person’s sexual orientation is his or her physical, emotional, mental, and sexual attraction to a particular sex. There are four categories in which sexual orientation is divided into, heterosexuality, homosexuality, bisexuality, and asexuality. Although I identify as heterosexual, my older brother is bisexual and has had many struggles accepting this part of himself. Much like racism and sexism, heterosexism is a systematic disadvantage throughout our social institutions, offering power to those who conform to the “norm.” For my final concept I chose to evaluate the idea of gender roles. It doesn’t go unnoticed that newborn babies are immediately wrapped in a blanket of either pink or blue depending on their sex. This is just the beginning of gender roles and their presence in our adolescence and everyday lives. One way children learn gender roles is through play and their parents, little boys are typically given cars, trucks, and action figures as toys while girls are given things like dolls, and mini bake ovens. It is said that even though there are gender mutual toys out there, the majority of children still play with the toys associated with their gender roles because their parents reward and encourage gender normative behavior. This is one thing we all were raised around and can relate to, although there are people making more of a conscious effort to let the child decide their own gender roles, I do not see this deeply rooted socialization process coming to an end.

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“She-He-Everybody” flyer put out. I think this is a good thing to put into my website because it addresses gender roles, which is one of the concepts I touched on throughout this milestone. 

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An advert from Planned Parenthood easily breaking down the concepts of Gender Identity, Sexual Orientation, and Biological Sex. 

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Sociological Concepts at Work:

-The Stages of our Socialization-

One sociological concept that stood out to me in the text was brought forward by George Herbert Mead, he believed that there is a specific path of development that all people go through. There are stages we go through such as the preparatory stage, in this stage you are a child and are not able to choose the people you regularly interact with. The child is primarily socialized by their parents, this often leads to imitation of the ones they interact with the most. It goes on to mention that the children might do things such as “play dress up” or mimic grown up behavior. I thought this was interesting to learn about because I remember doing these things as a child. I think it shows a lot about how we become who we are, as a child all I wanted to be was like my mom. I’m sure that is the case for every child at one point or another. Every kid has a different experience because they are raised and socialized around unique individuals with their own sense of self, however they all go through the same specific path of development.

-You Are a Product of Your Friends-

Our peer groups are another important concept that shape who we are, I think it plays a huge role in my life and the person that I see myself as. I mentioned earlier, as children we are around our families the majority of our time, but when you get to the age where you go to school you are now surrounded by others your age who will play a role in your socialization. When you are an adolescent you begin to see yourself as a separate identity from your parents. Peer groups are extremely important during this stage of life, people within the same friend group share similar values, beliefs, and hobbies. My group of friends all enjoy the same activities and entertainment, I think that we all reflect in each other, it is interesting that the ones you hang out with can say alot about you. In college, there are many different groups of friends, often times you can tell how people are just because you know someone else in their friend group, people cant help but make judgement on others based on the people they associate themselves with. Considering our friends so largely impact who we are, it is not surprising that we make these assumptions.

-The Problem With The Medias Strong Influence-

The mass media plays a huge role in who we are and how we see ourselves. In today’s world it is arguably the most influential in our social norms because we are surrounded by various forms of it constantly in our everyday life. Mass media distributes impersonal information to a wide audience through television, newspapers, radio, the internet, advertisements, billboards etc. We are being exposed to this non stop, the average american spends more than four hours in front of the TV on a daily basis. Many sociologists have studied how the media affects a child growing up watching television and seeing things such as celebrity magazines and their role in young girls fashion. They believe that younger girls are striving to dress “sexy” to be like the older girls and famous people they see in the media. This is definitely something I can identify with. My friends and I use to want to be just like the famous girls on the radio and on TV like Britney Spears. Now that I am older I have gone back and watched some of these music videos and they are extremely provocative, this is a personal example of how the media influenced my beliefs and sense of self during my childhood and overall socialization.

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the amount of mass media the average american is exposed to daily. 

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This is an example of a “role model” to my generation when we were young girls... completely overly sexualized. I was 10 years old watching this video and wanted to be them and emulated their dances and outfits. ( there were many other artists at the time that did this as well, brittany spears, pussy cat dolls, etc.) Looking back on it now I realize how sexualized they were and that I was far too young to be looking up to behaviors like these.