Culture And Social Interaction

Our culture is what helps us discover our sense of self throughout our lifetime. We learn about culture by being guided by our different agents of socialization which include our family, school, peer groups, religion, etc. Our social agents are developed because of our relationship with other human being’s, which means social interaction is a necessity to develop our culture. So why is social interaction becoming less and less nowadays? Through our societies constant technological advancements in social media, smartphones, the internet etc. our society as a whole has become less and less engaged in face-to-face interaction and instead we prefer to interact with other others from behind a screen. As we continue to advance more and more with …show more content…
childhood, adolescence, adulthood, and retirement/aging. Everyone experiences these stages differently and take on certain roles throughout. The stage at which we are in most need of social interaction is in our early years, throughout our childhood and adolescence. Although we experience change in our culture and roles throughout adulthood and even retirement. Our first stages in life are what impact us the most. Coincidentally the most abundant users of smartphones, tablets, and social media in our society are adolescents and children. In a 2012 Ted talks video, Sherry Turkle explains her views on the negative effects of technology on society. Throughout the video she emphasizes that we are losing our skill to communicate and relate with other people by not using it and in turn losing the skill to communicate with ourselves. (Turkle 8:49). Some may argue that through social media and smartphones we see a form of social interaction. Although true, you only receive small amounts of communication through social media or a text, “they don’t really work for learning about each other, or really coming to know and understand each other” (Turkle 8:31). Through constant use “we become so used to getting short-changed out of real conversation, so used to getting by with less that we become almost willing to dispense with people altogether” (Turkle. 9:15). With that we lose our ability to relate to others …show more content…
The plenty of examples of what happens when a child or even an adult is socially isolated should emphasize the importance of social interaction. Take for example all the children from the many poorly run orphanages of Romania where although they were well fed, clothed, and taken care of while they were there, they received very little social interaction and attention. After being removed from the orphanages and placed in a healthy social environment the children were studied throughout a period of time and compared to children already born in a healthy social environment, throughout the study researchers realized the irreversible effects at which the children had succumbed to from social isolation. In comparison to the “socially healthy” children the Romanian children showed obvious differences. Their biology was affected, to where they were actually shorter and looked much younger, their overall IQ was much lower, they had social disorders, they were unable to form healthy relationships, and some children’s behavior was close to behaviors displayed by children with autism. (Hoynes 153). Although most people haven’t reached a point of social isolation, studies show that many are starting to show signs of an actual addiction and through that have developed mental disorders close in relation to mental disorders caused by isolation. In an article based around the research of a large