Exploring Social Media as an Ideological Apparatus for Sexualization and Cultural Shifts

Abstract

In this digital age, social media has a ubiquitous presence and an ineludible impact. Unlike conventional media, it is promptly and instantly accessible and has a consistent uninhibited access to our brains and, thus, a magnum impact on our worldviews and our culture. This study, first, dwells on the well-established link throughout the literature between media, in its conventional forms, ideology, and cultural change. Then, fixating on social media per se, it reveals how social media in its design and algorithms is an ideology-loaded and driven tool that has more momentum in impact on culture than simple forms of media. Moreover, this article provides ample evidence on how the ideologies that lurk and drive conventional media are the same for social media. Those perennial ideologies are consumer culture, the objectification of women, and the sexualization of children. Furthermore, this article illustrates how such ideologies manifest themselves on social media and how they impact culture by altering people`s outlook on the world. At last, this paper reports some of the studies, western and non-western alike, that associate social media and the ideologies imbedded in it with moral decadence and cultural alienation.