"The media has replaced family, society and religion as the main source of collective identity" Discuss

A focus on identity requires us to pay close attention to the diverse ways in which media and technologies used in everday life and their consequences both for individuals and social groups- David Buckingham

With the introduction of new media into our lives, Facebook and Twitter has slowly dominated our lives replacing somewhat human interaction especially when it comes to the family especially children. The Times headline in April 2011 read "Almost half of UK children break Facebook under age limit" which suggests that children are wanting more and more to join Facebook because it is a growing trend but also going behind their families backs to create an account. This gives us a sense of the collective idenity of youth as they want to keep up with modern trends even at a very young age. In relation to the question this shows a breakdown in 'old fashioned' communication in the fact we want to speak to our family and friends online through chat rather than talking face to face. On social networking sites such as Facebook we can also build our own family tree but add who we like not just our family, for example you could add your best friend but as your sister. The idea of having our immediate family listed is no longer perhaps desired but to think of our friends as family also showing that anyone can be our family on these sites. This relates somewhat to the idea of Ponti, having an embodied experience when adding your friends to your family tree as you feel a sense of happiness as if you are actually building your own family of choice. The idea of youth creating a collective identity through using the internet is this exact reason in the fact we can create our idea of a family and express ourselves through our profile.

Religion has always been an important factor in people’s lives, determining how they act and what they do. Although the internet has had a profound affect on religion. An article in The Guardian dated 17 April 2011 read “Online, God has been released from traditional doctrine to become everything to everybody”. This suggests the idea that instead of God been solely in the bible and for religious followers to go to church and pray in a traditional manner you can now find out everything you need online. There is access to online bibles and you can even write prayers and receive them through email! This takes away the tradition values of religion somewhat as we can now sit on our computer and find everything we need. Also through search engines there is so much information on different religions and many people are reading up on these and consequently joining and following these religions which there are no restriction on. George Barna who is an American religion researcher stated that he believes young people who attend church regularly would leave their congregation and rely on the internet for their spiritual needs. Youth and their collective identity could be created as they could leave their churches and join online chat forums or prayer groups via email instead of physically going to church, emphasising how the modern day technologies have had an effect on religion and its practises.

Society had been affected enormously by the media. The media can influence people’s opinions and views on any topic through newspapers, television and the internet. We have access to many forms of media and all with different and conflicting information. The theory of post modernism can be related to how new media has affected our daily lives as we now are bombarded with different messages and the media becomes our reality. Social networking allows us to communicate with our family and friends without having to pick up the phone; the online press allows us to read about what we are interested in and base our decisions on this. For example the recent London Riots and the Medias portrayal of it, The Sun headline read “British youths are the most unpleasant and violent in the world” dated in August 2011. The words used in this headline are damming and to an older generation this would frighten them greatly as they have seen on the news, this would only add to their fears. When reading these headlines or watching the news a Marxist view would see us as being a passive audience accepting all the messages we receive which reflects the impact modern day media is having on our lives. All these means allow us to create a collective identity by reading the same things, having the same opinions or using social networking to form an identity with others.

The media has a had a profound affect on our family life, society and religion in the view we have to it compared to in the past, the way we act towards it now and the amount of access we have to things in relation to it.