5. Influence of mass media and technology institutes on socialization

In the last 75 years, media innovations – radio, motion pictures, recorded music, television, and the Internet – have become important agents of socialization.

Television has certain characteristics that distinguish it from the other agents of socialization. It permits imitation and role playing but does not encourage more complex forms of learning. Watching television is, above all, a passive experience; one sits back and waits to be entertained. Critics of television are further alarmed by the programming that children view as they sit for hours in front of a television set. It is generally agreed that children (as well as adults) are exposed to a great deal of violence on television [3, p. 115-127].

Like other agents of socialization, television has traditionally portrayed and promoted conventional gender roles. For example, content analysis of television advertising has shown that the best-selling violent and gender-specific children's toys are frequently advertised, whereas the best-selling colouring books, play dough, and other gender-neutral toys are not.

While we have focused on television as an agent of socialization, it is important to note that similar issues have been raised regarding the content of popular music (especially rock music and "rap"), music videos, motion pictures, and Internet Web sites. These forms of entertainment, like television, serve as powerful agents of socialization for many young people. There has been continuing controversy about the content of music, music videos, and films – sometimes leading to celebrated court battles – as certain parents' organizations and religious groups challenge the intrusion of these media into the lives of children and adolescents. In recent years, people have expressed concern about the type of material that children can access on the Internet, especially pornography.

Finally, sociologists and other social scientists have begun to consider what impact Internet communication may have on socialization. For example, is the person who spends significant amounts of time on-line in chat rooms creating a new peer group? And what does it mean for socialization if the people we interact with on-line present themselves as something they are not? Suppose, for instance, you communicate regularly with someone who says he is an experienced deep sea scuba diver, an interest you share, but in fact this person has never been in more than four feet of water. Preliminary studies do suggest that heavy Internet use affects the traditional agents of socialization because the Internet user interacts less with family and has fewer friends [5, p. 987-1001].

In our discussion of culture, we examined the process of homogenization of culture, that is, the spread of American culture to other parts of the world and its social impact. The mass media are the main conduit for the diffusion of American popular culture to semi-peripheral and peripheral areas. This diffusion is seen as particularly threatening to children who are exposed to it through the media before they learn their own native culture. In other words, the fear of cultural homogenization is based on the idea that the mass media are a powerful agent of socialization. 

The mass media cover a wide range of means of communication, information and entertainment, such as books, music, newspapers and magazines, radio, television, the Internet as well as video games. Access to these media is a matter of income such that there is wide inequality in media use. For instance, in peripheral areas, the radio still represents the main medium (Osama bin Laden still records his speech on tapes for his peripheral audience but records televised messages for his core audience).

In addition, on an average, American children watch over two hours of television every day and as much time playing video games. Supersaturation refers to the state where we are so completely surrounded by various mass media and they are so embedded in our lives that we no longer find that fact remarkable or noticeable. At the same time, mediated experience becomes central to our perception of the world and our selves.

The effects of living in a media-supersaturated environment have been the subject of a lot of discussion and controversy: does the content of television programs and video games make children less sensitive to violence and more prone to aggressive behavior? Is intense media exposure detrimental to academic success? In trying to answer such questions, one should avoid exaggerations and simplifications. Human behavior is almost never the product of one variable (such as playing video game).