Ethnocentrism

Ethnocentrism is makes up one of the elements of culture. Ethnocentrism is basically the habit of seeing things only from the point of view of one’s own group. We see the ethnocentrism element happen every day and everywhere. A real life example that can explain the meaning of ethnocentrism is Salon’s article “Forget about rainbow parties, sex bracelets and sexting: Today’s kids have not gone wild”, a TedTalks about a man that was born to be a Terrorist, and also ideal first dates.

The media plays a huge role in culture and ethnocentrism because the media has the power to display many things out to the public to see and analyze. A big topic that the media has been displaying is what our teenagers are doing secretly today. The media warns parents and adults about pervasive activities such as sexting, sex bracelets, and rainbow parties. Sexing is texing sexual images using their smart phones, sex bracelets are used to indicate what sexual activity they would like or have done before, and a rainbow party is where people get together to perform oral sex. The media would put out this information. Looking at the words in my explanation of these activities that teens are apparently doing, any parent will freak out. As parents, which are a group, we do see all these activities to be wrong and disgusting. With the media also being the catalyst to the parent’s panic, it is a great example of seeing things only from one point of view. Parents are seeing things from the media’s point of view. According to Salon’s article, although these activities are real and do happen, it is being exaggerated way more that how often it actually happens.