The Shift in Cultural Literacy: Social Media and How It Leads to Unsocial Behaviors

A late night thinking, rapidly-written by a kid with an acute insomnia.

The ability to understand and participate in the given culture, or what E. D. Hirsch has coined as "cultural literacy", in my opinion, is now experiencing a shift in Indonesia. Although, over the years, there were debates to Hirsch's works on what indicator should we consider a person to be culturally literate or culturally illiterate. But, to my belief, it can depends on what culture we choose to participate the most.

A study stated that, approximately, we look at our phone 100-150 times a day (guilty as charged). Virtual conversations, updates, and news (sometimes with no validity of sources) have now become a culture. Our culture. The proves are everywhere. Two people who have never even met before can be friends in just a click, and so can the opposite. A social media user, sometimes, don't mind saying vile things to other unknown user to, I don't know, comply the need of contributing?

So I now can conclude that, understanding a culture or to be culturally literate now means... having social media accounts and not missing out the updates. Because, once again, this is the culture we now choose to participate the most. But the question now lies on our identities. In social media, it's no secret that we construct our personalities and images. We spend 60-70% of our times a day communicating in a way that we can just fake it and no one will find out. And of course, a culture is formed by how human beings choose to present themselves in a society, both individually and collectively.

This nature of identity construction, produces personalities of which, we don't care if we're morally right or wrong, as long as we're participating. For we have now created a barrier for ourselves, which gives us the sense of being recognized PLUS being untouchable. Cyber-bullying caused by an antagonist creates another antagonist, a hyper-realistic post from an insecure personality creates another insecurity, that is the culture we now see everyday. Unconsciously, in social media we have shrink our real-life personalities in such way and leave no room for us to channel our own emotional capacities, such as empathy, affection, so on and so forth.

The instant culture that social media now offers has also made an impact to our critical thinking. Because it's easier to believe, to like, and to post our comments, with this whole convenience. The domino effect begins with self-confidence, and self-confidence leads to ignorance, and ignorance leads to... God only knows. Immoral image or video postings, followed by never ending arguments, to name a few.

Empathy and tolerance, are now nowhere near our social media lives.