Social Learning

The fact that the media heavily influences our society today can be a scary thought. Television characters and strong movie protagonists are often a teenager’s role model. As less and less censoring constricts the media, people are raised to see more and develop faster while their rate of emotional maturity continues to slow down.

            Social learning is the concept of trends following what the media exposes. Such as the movie Juno exposes how lenient society has become towards teen pregnancies. By expressing a certain ideal in any form of media the onlookers view the topic as a typical part of life, unless it is too outlandish. If a new principle is consistently applied in various media venues it unknowingly appears to be a regular part of society. If one action is showed enough the public will unknowingly partake as well.

            Facebook’s concept as a whole contributes to social learning. When a user ‘likes’ a certain product or company they give permission for that company to post advertisements to see along with friends’ statuses. The typical posts a person reads from their friends’ statuses influence others. If your friend likes a certain activity and discusses it on facebook a person is more likely to try the activity because of that short conversation Sue posted. Sue says that she had a great time rafting the river and her friends chime in about how exciting it is. After seeing the conversation you decide to try it yourself. The same concept is applied to corporation pages. Simple questions such as “how do you eat your frosty?” evokes thousands of interesting responses, all of which make you want to have a frosty. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people are commenting in different ways makes a frosty that much more appealing with the concept of ‘fitting in’ when consuming one. Having a frosty becomes more of a way to fit in society and be like others.  If the concept were reversed and almost nobody likes a frosty then a person is less likely to continue consuming the product due to the strong want to be an average person.