Is Pop Culture Good for You? By: Katheryn Mayta

                            

I believe Pop Culture is neutral for me. It is a yes and no answer depending if it's social media or modern TV. I say modern TV has a big impact and it helps your brain develop more and want to know what is happening. Social media can be fake, sometimes it's not healthy because everything is being given to you, when that's not good. Your brain should be able to think, to work and try to figure out why and how and where. TV is usually about watching and figuring out the plot and you can share with friends and family as to social media, you face critics, hate comments, messages. This is another major factor that causes anxiety and mental health problems to teens and adults. 

According to Steven Johnson’s "Watching TV Makes You Smarter" TV helps the brain illustrate how to interact and improve social intelligence. Seeing how the characters communicate and act towards others helps us humans understand emotions, tone, moods, and social cues. This is one of many factors needed in life for a job, communicating with your parents, in the future with your kids, understanding your students, etc. Another TV helps your brain sustain itself with memorizing and attention. Memory and attention is important because we learn new things everyday. We need memory to solve problems and be able to refer back. We will encounter situations where we need to make good decisions. In conclusion, TV is valuable for the brain and emotions.

According to "Small Change: Why the Revolution Will Not Be Tweeted" by Malcolm Gladwell, social media has its ups and downs. Social media can be used in a good way to organize donations, protest, create your own business, promote things, etc. But social media can also be used as a lazy resource, because you won’t do any actions but just post and like. Malcolm Gladwell describes how social media has gone a far way and has become weak compared to how people would before organize themselves and do action.

I believe both TV and Social media are important resources. I use TV as entertainment but also as solving problems to figure out the solution or conflict. TV has impacted my brain by giving me scenarios and information to gather. Social media is also an important and powerful resource. TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, X, Youtube are all amazing resources to post anything. If you want to protest, social media is a good starter. An example is the Black Lives Matter, where everyone used hashtags and the whole world was able to know what was going on in the United States of America. I use Social Media constantly, it’s part of a day in my life and I believe some changes should be made for little ones. TV should be used more for kids so they can live an imaginary life before hitting reality. Social media can cause a lot of harm, there is bullying and it is one of many reasons why I would consider social media as an adult tool.