The Internet's Influence On American Culture

The internet has only been influencing our current culture for a decade, and it has already become a more important catalyst for social development then thousands of years of cultural evolution. Internet connections have started to become the norm; even the poorest nations and peoples have some limited access to the vast wealth of information the internet offers. This accessibility of information is the exception, not the rule. Normally, education was only available to the richest in a society, which effectively concentrated and contained most knowledge to a small, rich population who used this education to maintain and grow their collective wealth. The wealthy, being the only ones with access to this information, could also mold the facts …show more content…
The war on pot has deteriorated with the rise in accepted personal and professional anecdotes about the drugs medicinal and social benefits, with the only opposition it faces being from a detached, older generation that cannot see the dangers and corruption in the pharmaceutical industry. The internet has brought into question the churches ability to deny the humanity of a homosexual; the cultural definition of marriage has changed and brought about a new rise in sexual rights. As the internet becomes more and more prevalent, the national inequality gap will decrease and society will continue to shift from a patriarchal society that bases many of its cultural truths on unquestioned ideological beliefs to a more unified society that emphasizes secularism, basing truths around the scientific method, and universal …show more content…
It is an understood requirement that anyone wanting to get a full high school degree or even attempt at attaining a college degree have a laptop, and anyone in the work force be reachable at all times and have a complex understanding of computers and in their software. The overall effects of the internet can first be seen on a developing child. A child’s brain development will start much younger; parents have much more access to games and programs that will promote intellectual growth, as well as overall information on how to properly raise a baby, from feeding it to changing its diaper. It is even hypothesized that the early exposure to technology creates equality in online communications among computer users of all ages, which will erode typical authority structures, resulting in children being less accepting of parental authority, and authority in general (Howard). These are the first examples of how the internet changes the family structure set by society previously; rather than rely on information about raising a child taught or passed down through the family structure, the parents can look at information that is regulated and relayed by experts in the field, and eventually, evidence says, the child will learn to teach themselves (Subrahmanyam 123). An access of information, rather than