Cultural Norms

When considering what traditions and events I celebrate with my family and friends, I am forced to realize what has become culturally accepted and what has not. Most of my family and friends consider birthdays to be a special day, including all of their closest relatives and having tons of food and celebrations. Birthdays are generally a good excuse to have a party, or go out for dinner and a movie with your loved ones.
In my circle of friends, we have two types of social interactions. The first, a more traditional one, being that we physically are together and participate in events such as dinner, watching movies, going shopping, or being active together. The second type of social interactions I participate in are through social media. Although many believe that the technological advances are the greatest thing to ever happen, sometimes I have mixed emotions. I realize that I may sound hypocritical by stating that opinion, as I sit here on my laptop to publish this post for an online course. But as much as I appreciate and love the help and quickness the internet provides, it comes with many negative aspects. One of these is that our culture is accepting of using texts or Facebook messages as the primary means of communication. Whatever happened to walking to someones house and asking them if they want to go for a walk or hang out? Another is that it encourages laziness. It prevents us from wanting or having to spend our free time outside or actually seeing our friends, because we are so preoccupied with Netflix or researching a certain topic.
Along with both physical social interactions and social media interactions comes the new term "first world problems.' Our culture, developed in a first world country, is accepting of having to have exactly what we want and having it the moment we want it. 'First world problems' include things such as when your webpage wont load, or when your cell service is crappy. Of course I complain about these sorts of things too, even though I should know better. Sometimes I am forced to take a step back and just think about how the culture I live in considers something a problem when that specific thing is not even known about in another culture.