Today’s society is consumed and marked by new technology, social media, advertising, and popular attitudes or trends. All of these aspects combine to create the influential pop culture, which in turn develops new characteristics of modern society. Affecting people’s lives on a daily-bases, pop culture brings forth a multitude of opinions that gain an enormous voice and pull trends towards one direction or another. However, the though provoking concern is that pop culture is negatively affecting human interaction and development. Therefore, it is some people’s opinion, as well as mine, that pop culture is setting human interaction on an unprogressive track. Furthermore, pop culture invades personal lives and tries to forcefully influence the public.

On the other hand, it might be just the opposite. Pop culture could be viewed as a beneficial factor to society and individual communities because it connects people. With the wide range of ideas and perspectives that it accommodates, there is a certainty that anyone can find something that they can relate to. Despite this fact, it is the way in which social media connects people that is unappealing to many. The main point is that while social media allows individuals to connect over longer distances, even globally, it detaches them from the local world at the moment. They become separated, verbally uncommunicative, and essentially boring people. 

Everyday, any person will encounter a situation in which at least one person in a group will be doing something on his or her phone, not paying attention to the rest of the people present. Although inattentiveness is the biggest problem social media creates in face-to-face settings, it isn’t the only one. Many studies have found that social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, and Vine, and mass media are contributing to a growing list of students’ distractions, which in turn does no good in terms of academics.

The explanation behind the distraction is that social media sites are very addicting. They achieve this through a system of invisible algorithmic editing. Website filters go through what users are viewing and personalize the news feed in accordance with the presumed posts the users would be interested in. Obviously, the more personal a website is, the more favorable it becomes because it only shows what the viewer likes. Eli Pariser, the chief executive of the website Upworthy and an internet activist, warns people about these filter bubbles, and rightfully so. Filters engage teens more than they think because, unknowingly, their feed is very interesting and addicting to them.

Pop culture doesn’t only have problems in social media. Mass media seems to be a constant bother these days as well. Advertisements are everywhere. They are increasingly longer during TV shows, they ruin the outdoor setting, and can be on the radio for prolonged periods of time as well. Advertisements forcefully try to get the public to agree with their point of view or to buy their product.  A worse case scenario exists when a bad message goes around on mass media. It is true that pop culture connects people, but it also enables everyone to see this message.

Pop culture has many good aspects to it, but, in the end, it is a sever distraction to the public from true human interactions. A girl sitting on the swing and not playing with other children because of her phone is a sad image of reality. Pop culture has swooped in with new social technology, but not for the better. It is important to maintain a proper balance between the screen and real human faces. That is why I believe that pop culture needs to be put aside at times, ignored for even an hour, and one needs to become free of its constraining grip. People need to reflect on how they are interacting with the world around them.