Socialization In The Film: The Wolfpack

Socialization is very common among human beings. We socialize in all sorts of places and think nothing of it. From the moment we enter school, we have officially started our days of interaction with others. We instantly become surrounded by individuals we don’t know and can learn so much just by talking and listening to people. Parents encourage their kids to meet people and gain some friends. Why is this? Why are we encouraged to interact with others? Most people believe that socialization is good, but in a documentary “The Wolfpack” suggests otherwise. Socialization is great for human beings, although I’ll admit there are some negatives. For one of the reasons as for why socialization is negative, it so happens to be surrounded in college.
In this generation, we are becoming more secluded. Most of our socialization occurs online instead of face to face which can be a serious problem. In “Confronting loneliness in an age of constant connection” by Laurie Meyers, “‘with social media, smartphones, the Internet, we are more in touch with what is occurring with others,’ Opthof says. ‘However, we are not [really] connected to individuals. We don’t sit and talk. How many times are we at a restaurant and we see people at the same table all looking at their phones?’” My first phone was at the age of eighteen and I can relate to this completely. At every class, doctor’s appointment, restaurant, you name it, people sat around with their phones in their hands. Now that I have a phone of my own, I catch myself doing the same. This type of socialization is not what we should be so attached to. It was even “found that Internet use did not have a significant effect on most people’s levels of loneliness except for with those who were already lonely” (Meyers). So if you’re not a lonely person then the Internet will probably not affect
A study was done in which their “findings from Study 1 indicate that the more socially engaged participants were, the higher their level of cognitive performance” (Ybarra et al. 252). In this study, Ybarra et al. measures the relationship between cognitive performance and social interaction. Those who claimed they interacted socially more than others had a higher cognitive performance. More specifically it heightened their memory and those who were more socially interacted with others were less likely to have Alzheimer’s. So the moral of the story in this case, is if you become a very social person then your cognitive performance will