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Sociological theories of drug use
Sociological view on drug use
Effect of facebook on self - esteem
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For the majority, when considering a drug addict or alcoholic, different stereotypical images come to mind. For example, a good deal of the population sees heroin addicts as junkies. Homeless, living on the streets, begging for money, robbing, and prostituting is the definition of a heroin addict. Numerous see alcoholics as homeless, old men. These men are too lazy to try to obtain a job or put any effort into their daily lives. Lastly, marijuana users take on the name of ‘stoners.’ Those with no job, lazy, and dysfunctional societal members is how we view stoners. We judge drug addicts and alcoholics as those who come from broken homes, low income families, certain towns, and even races. This is a heavily applied stereotype. Heroin addiction …show more content…
Social media create an environment where one is constantly worrying if they are saying or doing the right thing, or even if they are representing themselves in the right way. Sherry Turkle interviewed adolescents regarding building of online profiles. One girl Mona, says that she “worries that she does not have enough of a social life to make herself sound interesting…” Another girl says “I really want to only have my cool friends listed…” Due to this constant worry, “the years of identity construction are recast in terms of profile production” (Turkle). Social sites inhibits adolescents to be who they genuinely are—a immense part of self-identity. According to Erik Erikson, self-identity is the main goal in adolescents. Today, adolescents are using social platforms to try and achieve their self-identity, using outside sources to try and identify who they are on the inside. Not living up to the standards of others creates self-esteem issues. Self-esteem is the personal value that one attains from understanding themselves (Destinations for Teens). Low self-esteem is a monumental factor in substance abuse in adolescents. Their peers stigmatize them, leading them to develop an addict identity, further driving the addiction. Self-awareness is not new to adolescents, but this age is the first time where teens live their lives through the …show more content…
We center judgment around those who has less than we do, believing they are lazy and undetermined. Americans label these undetermined individuals as poor. We look at drug addicts as those who are poor or live in poverty. Countless believe the poor is that way due to drug use or alcoholism. Whenever viewing a homeless person on the street, our minds immediately believe that they are asking for money so they can buy drugs. According to Bell Hooks, “socialized by film and television to identify with the attitude and values or privileged classes in this society, many people who are poor…internalize fear and contempt for those who are poor.” This occurs as a result of associating them with worthlessness, lack, and depravity. These stereotypes scrutinize them because the media rarely represents the poor in positive ways like having dignity and integrity. Although poverty can be a result of drug use, drug use can also be a result of poverty. Drug dealers and addicts surround those living in poverty, making it easy to obtain drugs (Seacliff). Even so, we still treat those in poverty that are not drug users with disrespect. This is all due to negative stereotypes. “To change the devastating impact of poverty on the lives of masses of folks in our society we need to change the way resources and wealth are distributed. But we must also change the way the poor are represented” (Hooks). We need to view the
Hooks pointed out that many of his professors insinuated that there were negative stereotypes of being poor. Moreover, that self-esteem is linked to financial wealth; women he met with were on government assistance, but chose to get further in debt to appear to have money, never wanting to be labeled poor. Hooks was raised to believe that morals and values made one rich; that one could have all the money in the world but still be poor because of their attitude. Who’s accountable for why people in our society are poor? It’s seems a vicious circle that is hard for poor kids to escape. Many people with low incomes are “intelligent, critical thinkers struggling to transform their circumstances” (Hooks, p. 488) There are many resources, such as theaters that are empty all day, to pay it forward and help the less fortunate gain skills from college students and professors sharing their knowledge. Barbara Ehrenreich’s “How I Discovered the Truth About Poverty” questions why negative stereotypes of untrustworthiness in poor people. Because of this mistrust, the introduction of drug testing for government aid was passed. Why are those negative connotations associated with poverty? “Poverty is not, after all, a cultural aberration or a character flaw. Poverty is a shortage of money.”
Many young girls are aware that what they are doing on the internet can be seen by others and it can lead to positive or negative reactions from their peers. Orenstein is concerned about younger girls and women and how social media could take a bad turn on things for them. She wants us to know that social media can damage one’s reputation depending on how it is used. Girls post pictures of themselves on the internet in order to attract positive attention from their peers, as well as others who are considered as strangers. They want to be able to seek the attention from others in order to create an audience. As a result of this, Facebook is then used as a “social norm”, meaning that people can judge and form opinions based off of what is seen in an online profile. Orenstein explains that she isn’t trying to put technology in a bad light, because she uses it to keep in contact with her friends and family. She’s mindful about what she puts on the internet, while young adults are making their identities into a
On the other hand, if you are surrounded by an environment which revolves around drugs and bad influences, you have a bigger chance of falling into those same paths. I wasn’t poor but I wasn’t rich either, I was surrounded by an environment in which many people were in need of shelter and food because their families could not afford both. Just like poverty played a major role in my life, so did an ambitious and hardworking environment. Because those people I would see every day on the streets without food or a home, were the ones that had a bigger passion than anyone else, to one day be able to have a stable job and home for their family.
Homeless people have close to or even nothing and society looks down on them for it instead of trying to help them a lot of times. People treat those who are mentally ill differently because they think they are crazy or weird. Those with an addiction are rejected by society because they are viewed as a nuisance. Criminals are outcasts to society because people quickly judge them for the crimes they have committed. Anyone who is considered different is looked down upon by society because of the clothes he or she may wear or because of what he or she looks like. Everyone is a little different in some way, shape, or form, but that is not cause for poor
In his study Daniel Hopkins (2009) looked at the effect local context had on Americans’ portrayals of poverty. He focused on two major views of poverty: poverty in structural terms and poverty in individualistic terms. Poverty in structural terms is viewed as factors that are beyond the control of the person, such as shortage of jobs or part time and low wage jobs. Poverty in individualistic terms is viewed as failing of the poor themselves, such as a lack of motivation, drug abuse, or the poor are not doing enough to get out of poverty. For his research, he looked at two nationally representative surveys, the 2001 Poverty in America Survey (PIAS) and the 2000 General Social Survey (GCS). His results showed that people living in areas with a large majority of the poor being white are less likely to attribute poverty to the individuals themselves and more likely to look in structural terms (Hopkins 2009). This is in agreement with past research that showed that Americans view poverty in racial terms and see poverty as a situation the poor brings upon themselves. He also found that strong Republican areas view poverty more in individualistic than structural terms (Hopkins 2009).
Many people assume that those who live in poverty are just lazy and do not want to get a job. The people in poverty have this stereotype because they need help and do not manage very well to get by. The stereotype of being lazy these people have is very much not the case for all of them. As for many of us we are on the outside looking in and do not realize how hard it really is to live in poverty and deal with it. We need to realize that in our country we have a huge problem. People who live in poverty are hard workers and should be given an opportunity to contribute to society, one way to help them do so it with welfare which is something we need to reform.
There is a misunderstanding of the poor among Americans due to the separation of classes. Society has an assumption that the people in poverty are worthless or less-valued. Popular culture should eliminate these stigmas by working with the poor to provide a better understanding of what benefits them because these stigmas can lead to negative stereotypes.
The social lives of adolescents can be greatly impacted by the use of social media, being accepted, and can cause isolation and
Lisa Crooms says that “being visibly poor was seen as criminal because it was thought to be caused by conscious and deliberate choices to act in ways that were out of step with mainstream norms and mores regarding wage work, family structure, and reproduction.” The first reason why being poor is looked at as a criminal like act is because destitution is something that they could have prevented from happening to themselves. The reactions of many people when seeing someone homeless is to think of adjectives like “dirty,” “unintelligent,” or “lazy”. She also explains that poor communities and the people who live in them are seen as criminal-like from the outside because of their desperation (Crooms). Because of these negative feelings toward poor people, many working class people are angered that the unemployed are eligible for benefits that they can’t receive. It’s even more upsetting when this money is going to people who are the so-called “undeserving poor”. After all, someone lazy and unwilling to work shouldn’t be provided the minimum requirements to live while others have been working their entire lives to provide for their
...ng existence by silencing emotional, psychological, and physical burden with the help of injectable narcotics; some will seek treatment and others inevitably shall perish. The harsh reality of poverty is the predestined cycle of life and death at the hand of destitution, a fate that seems almost inescapable.
We assume that the problems the less fortunate go through (i.e. family, medical, personal issues, etc.) are nonexistent to them. Money seems to be a green light in all cultures, and because of that, we look at it as holding the ultimate power. With power comes arrogance, which is another social stigma that we group with having money. On top of everything that could go along with having money and success, another would be the assumption that the person is vapid or lacking real substance in life. If we view rich people as snobby and empty inside, how do we see people that are poor? Well, it is not any better. We look at people without money as uneducated and low-class. We assume that if the cashier at the grocery store is older than twenty-four than they are on welfare and did not graduate high school. A million things run through our minds because for a split second we think that we are on a higher pedestal than them. If it is like this for someone who at least has a job, it must be worse for someone living on the streets, right? Right. Just the mention of a homeless person probably has you selecting from an extensive list of stereotypes. Drunk, drug addict, failure, and scum are just a few that would likely come to mind. Instead of looking at them and asking what troubles they have encountered that would make them be on the streets we question why spent all
...November 26). Teens and Social Media | Child Mind Institute. Retrieved April 29, 2014, from http://www.childmind.org/en/posts/articles/2013-11-26-self-esteem-and-anxiety-digital-age
Digital communication has become the most frequented and effective platform of our generation’s form of instant communication. Within the most recent years of our technological development, we were able accelerate our communication skills via popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These new platforms have allowed us to advance our society in a unified channel, where everyone is connected anywhere in the world at any time. Due to the fact that social media is a relatively new and growing platform, we have come across issues that we are beginning to fall in the allure of getting lost in our own fictional persona’s, while losing touch with ourselves in the real world.
Teenagers have many ways to express and develop on social media with countless websites and applications. Teens have the options of expressing themselves through pictures, words, and videos on social media. They can express their feelings, opinions, and views about religious beliefs, favorite shows and about people. Teens can be whoever they want to be on social media. Social networking sites have allowed for many individuals to escape and create their own demographics by setting up their own profiles, listing any age, gender and race. Social media encourages self-expression because each person has their own page, which is all about them. It is a great way for people to show off their personality and their own views. Social media encourages teenagers to post original thoughts, funny comments, and inspiring things. Teens have many different platforms to voice their thoughts; they can make short statements on Twitter with its 140-character limit or make videos on YouTube for as long as they want. Social media allows teens to be independent because the can learn and develop alone on social media. Teens’ expressing themselves through social media builds self-confidence and develops social skills. When teens post pictures of themselves they get countless compliments. Since teens are surrounded by people around the world on social media they can read different opinions from other teens and also engage with them. Teenagers can
Young people can maintain social connections and support networks that otherwise would not be possible and can access more information than still before. When Sherry Turkle spoke at TED in 1996, reporting on her studies of the early virtual communities, she said, "Those who make the most of their lives on the screen come to it in a spirit of self-reflection." (Turkle). The communities and social connections young people form online can be invaluable for reinforcing and developing young people 's self-confidence and social talent. The use of social media and networking services, such as Instagram, Snapshot, Facebook and Twitter have become an essential part of Americans daily lives. While many associate social media with a degradation of young people’s social networks and communication skills, a recent literature review found that social networking services actually play a vital role in young people’s lives - delivering educational outcomes; facilitating supportive relationships; assisting in identity formation; and boosting a sense of belonging and