Assignment 3: The Ever-Changing Normal Across Generations
What is considered normal is not definite, rather it changes over time and is shaped through generations of by historical context. Conceptions of normality not only change across time but also across generations, history, and subgroups like race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. What is considered normal to one person may be completely abnormal or unusual to another person based on their own background and culture. For example, across generations, changes in what 's considered normal regarding technology and social behavior has changed drastically. For instance, children today are growing up using iPhones and iPads for entertainment, whereas kids back in the day used to play either indoor with cardboard games or used to go outside for fun and entertainment. Similarly, people who were born in the 1950’s did not have access to the vast amount of resources that are now available on the internet to the current generations.
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Normal has changed from culture to culture. For example, somebody with an individualistic culture focuses on personal growth and success, while somebody with a collectivist culture, focuses on harmonizing with its group, and in building and maintaining relationships. Furthermore, according to the sociocultural perspective, a change or shift happens because of the fact that what 's considered normal is not concrete, and normality happens to change over time, through people 's social context, and across generations. However, if we use the statistical perspective to figure out normality, then we are comparing ourselves to the masses of other people. Therefore, we can safely conclude that normality is an ever-changing phenomenon, no matter which perspective we view it