Sunday, September 19, 2010

Social Learning Taken to the Extreme

With some of the ridiculous acts being committed by society, the idea of social learning should not be shrugged off easily.  Prominent members of the media argue against the claim that some of society's actions are influenced by what they allow to be shown in theaters or broadcasted on television, but, especially nowadays, the theory of social learning is a hard one to deny.

The theory of social learning is very simple to understand.  It states that people mimic behaviors that they witness in the media.  Many people spend more time with fictional characters such as Spider-Man or Edward Cullen than they do with their own families and friends.  This is becoming increasingly more prominent as time passes by.  What is already an unnerving enough thought is intensified by the fact that some of them are imitating the acts that they see these characters do.  This would not a problem if the acts are harmless and just annoying, but some people have committed very unsettling acts, such as biting each other, or even violent ones-including murder, because of movies or other things that they have seen in the media.

One of the examples I mentioned above was that teenagers bite each other.  You might think that this is an exaggeration, but I assure you that this is actually happening in the world.  Recently, there has been an increase in the number of vampire related films and TV shows released.  With a few exceptions, many of these have tried to "humanize" this classic monster, but they have done a lot more than just that.  Because of The Twilight Saga, True Blood, and The Vampire Diaries, people now see vampires as sexy.  A nocturnal being that lives on human blood and gets it by sucking it right out of peoples' veins is now considered sexy.  What is especially chilling about this phenomenon is that now, due to social learning, a small group of people have taken to biting their boyfriends/girlfriends, as well as just their friends, to show their true love.  As the video below will explain, this act is social learning taken to the extreme.


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