Pop Culture: Positive or Negative?

Many people can say that Pop culture is a wondrous thing and that it has a positive effect on today's society. However, there are another select few who believe that pop culture has a negative effect towards society. Pop Culture can be interpreted in various different ways. While there are pros, there are also cons.

Pop culture can be quite harmful to today’s society. An example of this could be social media. In Malcolm Gladwell's Small Change, he states,” the evangelists of social media don’t understand this distinctions: they seem to still believe that a facebook friend is the same as a real friend and that signing up for a donor registry in Silicon Valley today is activism in the same sense as sitting at a segregated lunch counter at Greensboro in 1960.”  While people are being “activists” on social media, I feel that the way that they express their concerns about certain subjects can be much better. When I mean much better, I mean that they could definitely go out into the public and voice their concerns. Compared to how it was back then, activism now requires almost little to no work since people just sit behind their computer screens and write how they feel instead of going out and telling others. Another example of how harmful Pop Culture is would be how some modern television shows are toxic and uninformative. Some television shows like Honey Boo Boo or Keeping Up with the Kardashians can be quite toxic. Despite this show being entertaining to a select few individuals, they are quite toxic and display people who have little to no talent.

While people see pop culture as toxic, others see it as positive.  In Steven Johnson’s Watching Television Makes You Smarter, he talks about the sleeper curve and how many distractions like television and video games can be quite positive. In this article, he states, “ I believe that the sleeper curve is the single most important force altering the mental development of young people today, and I believe that it is largely a force of good.” Although there could be uninformative television shows like Honey Boo Boo, there are shows that are healthy to watch like Law and Order. This show gives us a general understanding about the law and how it is executed.

Pop Culture can have a positive effect on today's society. Despite it being somewhat positive, I feel that we as humans aren’t going towards the right direction and that pop culture restricts us from moving forward. All of us are either fixated on social media or lacking in the basic communication skills involved in real life interaction.