all right so let's take a look at some of the primary agents of socialization now depending on the book that you're reading or the scholar that you're listening to this list can vary however we're going to talk about three of the primary agents of socialization in this presentation today and we're also going to try and capture some of the micro and macro influences that those agents have on us an individual and on society in general so let's get started all right now as I said depending on the book you're reading or the scholar you're listening to this list can vary you could find a list as long as maybe a dozen of these different primary agents of socialization but we're going to concentrate on these three family peers and media now I want to tell you what a few of those others are before we move on religion is one the government is one the workplace is one so the economy is one so you can see how there are many more agents of socialization in our society than just the three we're concentrating on today but let's take a look at these three one at a time beginning with family right the family is considered to be the primary agent of socialization and a family environment should create emotional support by giving a child a safe environment in which to explore their emotions now we know that this isn't the case for every single child and every single family however we're talking here at the macro level so when we're talking about the agent of socialization that is the family we're not necessarily talking about your family we're talking about the institution of family and let me explain what I mean by that when I ask you to tell me what your family looks like that response is going to be varied across the Spectrum however when I ask you to explain to me what the American family is many of you are going to tell me roughly the same thing two parents two children maybe three two cars Mom and Dad or Mom and Mom or Dad and Dad both work we might have a dog we live in a nice house and so on so we have an overarching ideal in our society of what the family is this is our institutional understanding of family and when we're talking about family as an agent of socialization we're talking in that same broad kind of way we're talking about what the elements of family are which help to socialize that child to be a productive member of our society or at least a quote unquote normally socialized member of our society so not only should the family create this emotional support but it should also provide social control it should tell us what is right what is wrong what is appropriate what's inappropriate what behaviors are acceptable and what behaviors are not and parents can do this by a variety of ways they can use Force they can use rewards they can use punishment or they can use coercion and any one of these can help to provide social controls which help that child to event eventually become a well-rounded element in our society now let me make something clear when I'm talking here about social control and the use of force I am not talking about using physical force with your child but for example you may have a child where you feel like it's appropriate to ground that child by saying You must stay in your room for X days or you're not allowed to go out this weekend that is a type of force that many parents use to try to appropriately socialize their child and now here's the rub folks if parents aren't successful the results can be disastrous for that individual and also for society so there's something here that we have to take note of and that is the influence of the family the family has been recognized in sociological research as the primary agent of socialization meaning that it takes the front seat with regard to driving the socialization bus but in recent years you know the last maybe 20 or 30 years or so the family has started to lose some of its footing with regard to its primary agent status and it's losing some of that footing to these two other agents that we're going to talk about and the first of those is peer groups so in American society peer groups are increasingly taking the place of parents as an agent of socialization influence of peers begins in American society around the age of four when children start coming into regular contact with other children and this can be through kindergarten or prek it can be a parent who regularly takes the child to the playground when they're young it becomes stronger as the child ages and is at its strongest influence in that child's adolescent years now what's interesting here is in early years peer influence is very closely monitored by parents parents generally speaking will choose or dictate who that child can be friends with and has control over that child's exposure to other children in later years parents aren't as closely involved in monitoring uh the relationships that a child has via their peers and while I haven't really examined the literature I'm going to go out on a limb here and I'm going to make a couple of assertions theories if you will I'm going to theorize that the reason why parents don't spend as much time monitoring children as they age is twofold one of those reasons is likely that they feel like if they did a good job when the child is younger they can loosen the reins a little bit they can give the child a little bit of responsibility to select their own peers and who to interact and socialize with and the other thing I think probably would come out in research on this phenomena is that parents get tired as you get older and so you may have younger siblings that require your parents' attention more so than you do and frankly as your parents have more children and as they begin to get older their influence on you is going to become less intense for most children not for all peer groups as an agent of socialization also align very closely with the agent of media and with our government and economy and this can be a very dangerous combination in American society in particular we are the most consumer-driven Nation on Earth and so young adults in our society via the agent of media as a socialization element learn about the importance of buying and obtaining things and that's also Al very craftily and subtly linked to our economy which would bring us to the government as an agent of socialization now we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the government and economy in this lecture but we are going to talk about the media as an agent of socialization in the United States so the media is increasingly becoming important to us Society daily influences on us via all different Avenues of media are constant it used to be years ago that you would pick up the newspaper every morning and read it to get your information or you might look in textbooks for information or the occasional magazine but today not only do we still have newspapers books and magazines which some of us rarely use now but we also have a phone at our disposal at all times we have tablets that we carry around with us we have laptops and desktop computers and computers at work and computers at home and computers at school and we have vehicles by which to transmit our every thought at the drop of a hat via Twitter Facebook email and other Internet Resources now this can be a very good thing for a society because it helps to level the playing field for all of us so to speak it allows those of us who may not have regular contact with for example higher education to go out on the internet and find information that can help teach us about things that we otherwise may not have access to it also however can be a dangerous thing for society when we seek information on sources that haven't otherwise been deemed credible or reliable or properly vetted so we have to be careful here one of the primary things things that our media and American society does via television is socialize us to become consumers and there are billions of dollars at stake here for our economy one of the ways in which the media helps to socialize us to become consumers is through the concentration or convergence if you will of media Outlets what has happened over the last several decades in America is that fewer and fewer people have owned television we have just a handful of very powerful people at the top who are really in control of what we get exposed to on TV and have a vested interest in making sure that what we are exposed to aligns us to be good consumers and so the media can be a very very dangerous agent of socialization and it doesn't have have to be like that it could be used for very different purposes however this is the reality of American Media today so you can see we're scratching the tip of the iceberg here we've talked about a couple of the primary agents of socialization family peers and media and we've talked a little bit about the micro and macro level influences that are at play with regard to helping to socialize you into the person you are in our society I hope this helps take care