Westernization Of Social Media

First there were books, then came the newspaper, magazines, photography, sound recordings, films, radio, television, and with the dawn of 21st century came the new spectrum of media i-e, the new media of Internet, broadly polished into the now Social Media.

Average Pakistani in everyday routine life now depends on information and communication to keep his/her life moving through daily activities like work, education, health care , recreational activities, entertainment, traveling et cetera.

It is now normal in our daily routine to wake up in the morning and check our cellphones for messages and notifications. We look at the television and newspapers for news, commute to work, read e-mails, meet, talk and eat with friends, colleagues, family

Kids watch cartoons , teenagers listen to music ,see their favorite shows, adults keep themselves updated to current news and trends et cetera , with the access to broadcast ,outdoor, print and social media.

Theorists have emphasized the importance of mass media as an instrument of social control, Marshal McLuhan in the 1960’s said that “The medium is the message” and suggested that the mass media is creating a “Global village” – He was right. The rapid rise of westernization in our society is evidence to the globalization of the world.

The rise in new technology has made media very useful. The shift of feature phones and desktop computers to smartphones and tablets/ laptops respectively, has provided people with better internet access, screens and mobile browsers. Smartphones and tabloids being “all-in-one unit” provide easy access to games, news, shows, songs, books thus minimizing the need to carry different things separately for various purposes at the same

Online shopping has now become very common. It has made life easy for the public especially for women who can easily see stuff online, choose from the options and order them, minimizing the fatigue of going out to different malls and outlets.

With the rise of internet and introduction to new technologies such as “blogging” has changed the two-way relationship between mass media and public opinion. Since previously blogging was limited to only technical users with the knowledge of HTML and FTP, it is now growing rapidly because of its easy access to non-technical users as well. The ability to post information and allowing visitors to leave comments on the posts has made blogging a very useful and significant platform for discussions and mass communication.

One of the most recent entries into the young Pakistani teenager’s life and having profound effects is the Video games. Video games have entered in to our lives in a very silent mode but has the capability of having bull dozed impact on young minds of our society. The study concludes that many video games rated as suitable for all audiences contained suitable and significant amount of violence (64% contained intentional violence and 60% rewarded players for injuring a character). Video games may help develop fine motor skills and co-ordination but many of the concerns we have, for children and teenagers of inactivity, a social behavior and violence may apply