Deogracias Paghubasan

Module 3 Activity 1

Among the different forces that that shaped my daily activities are the “social forces” and the
“technological forces”

Social Forces

Exposure to our social culture has always played an essential role in the kind of people we become. As a
person, I typically adopt the values, attitudes, and beliefs of the culture that is most present in my life.
The initial culture I am exposed to is my family culture, but, as I move out into the world and am
exposed to messages from peers, school, extracurricular activities, and media, the influence of family
culture diminishes and the impact of my social culture increases.

In past generations, parents had relatively tight control over the popular culture to which their kids were
exposed. Parents had almost complete control over the environment in which they lived including
neighborhood, school, houses of worship, and activities. Yes, the broader popular culture could intrude
in the form of television, radio, print, and advertising in these media. But in each case, the choices of
where we received our popular culture (e.g., three TV channels, one local newspaper, a few magazine
options) and exposure to them, in terms of time, was limited.

In previous generations, our homes were a mostly safe haven from popular-cultural influences. They
were generally impermeable membranes through which relatively little information could be received
and only so much influence could be imposed on our development as children. Homes acted as a
sentinel against advertising and other unhealthy messages; thus, we as children were protected against
some of the most noxious persuaders that have always existed in popular culture.

How the times have changed, as they say. Social culture has had an enormous impact since the internet
was invented. It's challenging to comprehend how there are so many hours in a day when you factor in
sleep, meals, school, work, homework, extracurricular activities, family time, and time with friends.
Young people (and all of us) spend so much time online. Children today are exposed to messages from
our popular culture virtually constantly during waking hours. Our homes, which previously offered a
haven from the barrage of popular culture impact, have evolved into completely permeable membranes
that serve as no longer a barrier separating us from the popular culture in which we are immersed. In
other words, the formerly strongly delineated zone of impact of popular culture

Because social culture is pervasive and intertwined with every part of our life, it exerts a subtle but
significant influence on us that we are unaware of. Because shared cultural experiences act as a sort of
social sinew connecting our family, friends, peers, coworkers, and other people in our life, they are
something that we want as social beings. Rejecting our popular culture might make you feel as isolated
as you would on an island. Therefore, deciding to do away with popular culture would appear difficult, if
not outright impossible.
Technological Forces

This sharp increase in the use of technology and its effects on our lives has had an impact on more than
simply how much social culture may shape who we are. Every facet of human development—cognitive,
emotional, social, educational, political, and beyond—is now impacted by technology, which has
become a force unto itself.

Technology has always been motivated by the desire for profit, whether it be the telegraph, radio,
television, or computer. Much of the use of technology, from earlier times to the pre-internet period,
includes advertising meant to sell things to its consumers. However, social media has turned us into a
commodity that is sold to advertisers for enormous profits by platforms like Facebook, Instagram,
Twitter, and others in exchange for our information, data, online behavior, and time spent and
engagement on the various social media. Because of the commoditization of human attention, a new
branch of computer science dubbed "persuasive technology" has emerged, where Big Tech invests
billions of dollars annually to find new ways to "hook" us onto their platform and tangibly alter our
behavior.

A rising amount of research shows that technology can have an impact on how we think about ourselves
and others, what we want and buy, how we feel about politics, and much more—in some ways for the
better and in many ways for the worse. The difficulty with technology's influence on who we become is
that the influences are frequently concealed or included under the premise of amusement,
interpersonal connection, and social good, and their effects are sneaky, cumulative, and compounding.

Although I may theoretically decide to use less technology, as I just described in relation to persuasive
technology, that change is more difficult to implement.