Impact of Social Media on Culture Change

Impact of Social Media on Culture Change
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Impact of Social Media on Culture Change
Social media has become a major component of society due to increased digital transformation. Despite different cultures having unique norms, beliefs, and traditions, social media plays a critical role in uniting these elements. Social media is a new technology-based communication that allows individuals, regardless of their cultures, to share common platforms, information, and conversation (Sheldon et al., 2020). On the other hand, culture combines different groups' activities, capabilities, habits, beliefs, customs, and arts. Therefore, there is a critical connection between social media's influence on culture change. Besides, the compressed space caused by media convergence is shrinking the world into a smaller circle of social interaction. Individuals use the platforms to communicate without restrictions and barriers, making learning and adjusting to new cultures easy. People are now embracing the global village, which does not consider cultural boundaries and differences. For instance, people focus on intercultural adaptation to learn different skills in foreign countries without significant barriers. Therefore, examining social media's impacts on cultural change is significant. The paper's focus is to address the adverse impacts of social media on cultural change and embraces different examples from African culture. However, to understand the connection between the two concepts, the paper independently addresses the use of social media and cultural change and unifies them.
Social Media
Social media is part of culture today since it promotes interdependence and interconnectedness. It allows individuals to engage and communicate with each other due to their ease in accessing the internet. People have heavily embraced the use of social media, thus making it part and parcel of society. Besides, social media creates a reliable platform for dialogues and understanding of unique agendas of people (Fuchs, 2015). Social media also creates an opportunity for expressing opinions regardless of the culture, thus promoting a culturally diverse community. Individuals use social media for different purposes; however, the major reason is interaction and connection. For instance, according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, interaction and connection are necessary for every individual after meeting other primary and secondary needs. For instance, after an individual safety and physiological needs, people advocate for a sense of belonging, which forces them to actively participate in social communication and interaction. Social media allow individuals to communicate and achieve belonging regardless of cultural differences and practices. Besides, people use social media to learn different opinions from others. Therefore, social media is the basis of cultural change since it creates room for social interaction regardless of the cultural barriers.
Additionally, cultural differences influence values, behavior, and communication. For instance, Fuchs (2015) pointed out that people's communication behaviors and interaction patterns rely on their cultural pattern...