Research Opportunity and Cook County Survey

The Cook County Community Survey Symposium is this Thursday (Mar 20) at 4:15pm in Sister Jean MPR North in the Damen Student Center. You can see and hear about the research that your fellow students in sociology are doing as part of this class on survey research methods focusing on the Cook County Community Survey. This is a CURE course and counts as Engaged Learning credit in Undergraduate Research. This course will be offered again next year (Spring 2026), so this is an opportunity to gain research experience that will be available to you in the future. Thursday is a chance to get a taste of what opportunities are available by taking this course. Next year, the course will be offered as SOCL 311. 

Many students frequently ask how they can gain research experience in sociology during their time at Loyola. This is an opportunity to do just that. Check it out! Thursday. Damen. 4:15pm! 

Qualitative Assessment for Unit 2: Social Structure

Directions:

• The essay is due by the start of class 1 week from today.
• Write your answers and save them in a separate app. 
• Choose TWO questions to answer - one from each #1 and #2 below
• Each question has multiple parts, be sure to: answer all parts, use specific details from your own life experiences, and write with proper grammar and prose.

Essay Prompt:

This unit we have learned about how people are influenced by their social groups.  This process is called socialization and it begins from birth.  The groups that nurture are most powerful within our culture are called agents of socialization.  The agents of socialization that we examined in class are: family, school, friends/peers, and social media.  This assessment will examine the extent to which you can explain:  

1) the sociological concepts/perspective toward these agents, 

2) what sociological research reveals about how these agents influence individuals in our society and 

3) how these concepts and research show up in your own life or in your own authentic examples.

You MUST ANSWER BOTH 1 and 2 below:

1. Choose EITHER Family, School, Peers or Culture,  and answer the questions for it below.  Note that you only have to choose one (either family or media) but there are multiple parts for whichever you choose.  

A. Explain the difference between nature and nurture and how they interact to create/socialize who you are.  Give examples of how you are influenced by nature and then  how you are influenced by nurture from whichever group you chose for #1.  

B. Explain some of the research we examined (readings or video) such as Social Time, Kohl's Values Americans Live By, Thrive and how that research might apply specifically to your own life. Explain both the research and how you have been influenced/socialized and use specific examples from your life to illustrate whether this is true for you or not.

2.  Choose a DIFFERENT group than what you chose for #1 above and

A. Explain some of the research that shows how people are shaped/socialized by that group.  Use specific details from your own experience as an authentic example.  

B. Explain the difference between manifest lessons and latent lessons.  Then share an example of each from your own experiences with this group.  Be sure to include specific details/examples that authentically connect to your own life.

You will be assessed 8 points on each of the parts above (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B) if your answer was: fully explained, demonstrated a correct understanding, provided authentic examples.

• For any of the three areas above (explained, correct, authentic) that is not developed enough, students  will be assessed 1 point off of the total.
• For any of the three areas above (explained, correct, authentic) that is incorrect students will be assessed 2 points off the total.

Moving forward: If you found this unit interesting and/or want to learn more about how individuals develop a sense of self and are shaped by the social groups around them, consider taking SOCL230 Self & Society often taught by Dr. Everitt

3.01 Flipping Out over Social Class: Income

 Today we are gambling in class!  

We are playing a coin flipping game from the ASA's Teaching Sociology that is a metaphor for social class in the United States.  

As students enter, please get 3 pennies and wager with each other.

Rules:

• You must find someone to wager against and continue wagering with that person.
• Take turns flipping and wagering (one person picks the wager (how many coins) and one calls heads/tails).
• When I pause the action, be sure to count your coins and be counted!

    Charting the distribution of coins

 

 round        1        2        3        4        5

#coins

    0

    1-3

    4-6

    7-9

    10-12

    13+

BEGIN WAGERING!

Today's lesson:

• How does the simulation resemble social class in the US?
• What is the median income in the US?
• How does your family's income or the average person in your hometown compare?
• What does the median/typical American look like in terms of wealth, education, location, power and prestige? 
• How does your family or the typical family from your hometown compare to the typical US household?
• How do all of these components affect each other?

Google Form

Debriefing


A Metaphor for Our System

The exercise was a metaphor for social class, also called Socioeconomic Status or SES. It reflects reality in the USA in a number of ways:


Americans Believe that the Economic System is Fair and Equal

What are the chances of winning a coin flip?

If everyone starts with three coins, what do you think will happen as the contest goes on?

Like life in the U.S., the  exercise had the appearance of being fair and equal - everyone had a 50% chance of winning.  The U.S. is an open system - not a caste system or closed system like a monarchy or apartheid.  Because the American system technically allows anyone to move up, it gives the impression that everyone has an equal chance and that the system is fair.  The coin flip metaphor seems like everyone has a 50-50 chance to succeed.  This is true for U.S. society too.  From Jen Hochschild's book, Facing Up to the American Dream,  Americans believe in the "American dream;" success is attainable for anyone.  However, just like real life, the coin game takes a little luck.  If you are lucky enough to be born into wealth, it is an advantage just like being lucky to win early in the game.

The Difficulty of Defining Middle Class

At the end of the simulation, how would you define middle class?

Most Americans claim to be in the middle class.  People making $30K per year to people making $200K per year claim to be in the middle class.  Because Americans hate the idea of a class system, most Americans prefer to think of themselves as middle class.  This 2015 article from Smithsonian Magazine details a number of sources that show Americans like to believe that they are middle class.  However, rather than being a society of equality or a society of people in the middle, America has the highest rate of poverty among the 17 leading industrial nations.  Most wealth is at the top in the hands of very few people and most people are at the bottom with very littleHowever, defining the middle is difficult because there is so much money skewed to the top and there are so many people at the bottom.  Even though the game has the appearance of being an equal 50-50 chance, the rules favor a channeling of wealth to the top.  Every time we play this, the outcome is similar: most money at the top and most people at the bottom with very little money.  This is true in real life as well as the metaphor.  The wealth distribution in the U.S. resembles a Lorenze curve (here):

Compare this graph to a graph of the coin distribution at the end of the game.

Some of the specific similarities include:

• How difficult it is to define the middle class.
• The huge disparity between those at the top and those at the bottom.
• The large number of Americans who have no wealth/no coins.

 

Rather than being a society of equality or a society of people in the middle, the US has one of the highest rates of poverty and inequality out of the most developed countries in the world. 

The longer we play the game, the more skewed the outcome becomes

From the Economic Policy Institute,

Most Americans believe that a rising tide should lift all boats—that as the economy expands, everybody should reap the rewards. And for two-and-a-half decades beginning in the late 1940s, this was how our economy worked. Over this period, the pay (wages and benefits) of typical workers rose in tandem with productivity (how much workers produce per hour). In other words, as the economy became more efficient and expanded, everyday Americans benefited correspondingly through better pay. But in the 1970s, this started to change...Income trends have varied from state to state, and within states. But a pattern is apparent: the growth of top 1% incomes. 

Social class inequality in the U.S. is growing and has been for decades.  This growth is profoundly shaping the United States even though few seem to recognize it.  Economic inequality is influenced by many factors, including the economy, public policy and social changes.  The last several decades, income inequality has been growing.  The highest earning Americans have continued to earn more and more over the last 50 years, while the lower earners have earned closer to about the same.

Social Class Components (aka "Rules") Create a Similar Skew of Social Class

The "rules" of our society help to create that dynamic. By "rules" I mean the opportunities and obstacles that are embedded into our system, especially wealth, income, education, location.  All of these components both exemplify social class inequality and they exacerbate it.  Please read about each element below.  Remember to think about what an average American looks like and how your family compares.  I want you to have a better understanding of where your family fits compared to the average American when the lesson is finished.

Income and Social Class:  

What is income and what are some different types of income?

The first component of social class that we will examine is income.  Income is usually what Americans think of first when they think of social class.  Income is how much money a person or household takes in each year.  Income can come from different sources:

• Hourly Wages - It can be hourly wages such as a secretary or construction worker that makes $25 per hour and they only get paid for the hours they work.  
• Salary - a set amount regardless of how much one works like a teacher or a manager who makes a salary of $75,000 per year, regardless of the number of hours they work.  
• Capital gains - profits made off of investments.  An example of capital gains might be a stock trader who buys Apple stock at $100 per share and then sells it 2 years later for $200 per share.

1.  What do you think the median household income in the United States is? 

(please guess if you are not sure.) Note - Median is the middle, whereas mean is the average.

The “typical” (median) American family income

2.  What is the typical American family income?  

You can find the median income for the US as a whole and the zip code where you are from specifically by using the Census Data finder here.

Here is 2021 Data from the US Census Bureau:

The median income for households in the US was $74,755 in 2023. 

 

3.  How does this compare to either your own household income, or the zip code you are from?

Income by percentile

Another way to examine income is through percentile.  This is best visualized through the data analysis from the website Don’t Quit Your Day Job.  Here is how Rogers Park falls on the data:

For more on income by percentile, Four Pillar Freedom gives an overview (2019). 

Less Money More Work 

Income inequality has been growing since 1980

Here is Income Inequality from inequality.org. One graph shows that income inequality has grown to levels of the gilded age:

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities published this report with this graph detailing the rising inequality.

This 2017 NY Times editorial explains the rising inequality in one chart, from David Leonhardt (shown below).

The grey line is how much that percentile group's income grew from 1945-1980.

The red line is how much that percentile group's income grew from 1979 - 2014.

Note that more recently, the highest income earners experienced the greatest gains in income.  But it used to be the opposite - the lowest earners were making the highest gains.

This post from Slate details how there was much income inequality during the beginning of the 20th century, then the inequality lessened known as the great compression (1940-1980) followed by a growth in income inequality known as the great divergence (1980 - present).

Another resource for income is from the Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)  You can search for real income (adjusted for inflation) in multiple years for comparison.  Here is a graph showing the real income from 1984 to the most recent data.

The Rise of Dual Income Households

Despite the growing inequality in income, Americans are working more than ever.  The graph below from PEW shows the share of households who have two income earners from 1960 to 2012.   Families are busier and working more, but earning less and less of a share of the income in the U.S.

Lower Incomes Pay Higher Taxes

Another contributor to income inequality is government policy. Income has been becoming more unequal, but government policies can affect this inequality.  For example, some of the highest income earners actually pay a lower percentage in taxes than middle income earners!  From the Tax Policy Center, this chart (below) shows that higher income earners pay more of their taxes as capital gains taxes which are taxed at a lower rate than the majority of Americans who pay income taxes at a higher rate.

This chart (below) from the nonpartisan Concord Coalition  shows the rate that capital gains have been taxed compared to other taxes:

Note capital gains have always  been taxed at less than income tax.  And what this chart does not show is that if you can earn all of your money by capital gains and declare no income, then you can reduce your capital gains tax to zero! If you find the chart or all of the tax talk confusing, simply know this: Some of the highest income earners in the U.S. can pay the less income tax than the average American.  And, as tax rates have fallen since the 1950s, inequality has gone up.  The higher tax rates allowed the government to provide loans for college, small businesses and buying homes, and the taxes fueled projects that created jobs like building infrastructure such as highways, airports and the power grid, and even Red Rocks Amphitheater.

And this 2023 NPR story explains that many millionaires realize that the tax system is not fair and they would like to see that change.

Visualizing Economics also explains the changing tax rates.

Meditation: Listen for how far the noise travels

 

When the bell rings, we often don't realize it but the noise resonates out from the bell and travels to your ear.  We cannot tell how far that noise travels - out the window? into the hall? to the rooms next door or above and below us?  This is like the noise we create.  What we do in the world matters.  We are all participants in society.  But often we don't realize or don't see how far our influence goes.  

From Rumi,

Goodbyes are only for those who love with their eyes. Because for those who love with heart and soul there is no such thing as separation.

Can you hear the bell ringing even after it stops making noise? How far and how long does it travel?

 

Quantitative Assessment for Unit 2

 

• The assessment will be posted to Sakai under the Tests/quizzes tab at the start of today's class.
• You must take this assessment before the beginning of our class on Friday.
• Be mindful of the time - once you begin, you have 60 minutes to finish.  There are readings and that may take you a little bit of time. You are NOT allowed to skip questions - you must answer them as you go.
• Please do not share any answers, but you may use your notes to answer the questions.
• Don't be too anxious - you can always submit a qualitative assessment.  That assessment will be posted/assigned at our next class.

2.11 Social Dilemma and Social Media Debrief

  Resources from the Movie:

• My guide to the movie for intro to sociology is here.
• Social Dilemma Documentary website (https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/)
• Full, unedited Social Dilemma Transcript available here.

Articles/Publications by the people in the documentary:

• Our Brains Are No Match for Our Technology by Tristan Harris, New York Times

• The Dark Psychology of Social Networks by Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic

• Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business Review

• The Truth About Algorithms by Cathy O’Neill, RSA

• Want to Work for Google? You Already Do. by Joe Toscano, TEDx Talks

• Free Speech Is Not The Same As Free Reach by Renée DiResta, Wired

• Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now by Jaron Lanier

• Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil

  
  
  

Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab

Here is the Stanford University Behavior Design Lab featured in the movie.

Stanford U. Persuasion Through Mobile Design Lab is run by BJ Fogg, behavior scientist at Stanford, https://www.bjfogg.com/

In 2006 we created a video to warn the FTC (and others) about problematic areas related to persuasive technology. See the video here: https://vimeo.com/117427520

(BJ’s quick note: This video above has a slow pace, and it’s not my best look, with the shaved head and all. However, do listen to what I was predicting and warning people about. At least go to minute 10 and see what I say about the political use of persuasion profiles. We recorded this video in 2006 to warn policymakers of the impacts persuasive technology could have. Remember, this message was recorded in 2006 not 2016 and the message rings true more and more every day.)

Simone Stolzoff from Wired (2018) explains in The Formula for Phone Addiction Might Double As a Cure,

Ten years ago, a Stanford lab created the formula to make technology addictive. Now, Silicon Valley is dealing with the consequences.

"IN SEPTEMBER 2007, 75 students walked into a classroom at Stanford. Ten weeks later, they had collectively amassed 16 million users, $1 million dollars in advertising revenue, and a formula that would captivate a generation. The class—colloquially known as "The Facebook Class"—and its instructor, BJ Fogg, became Silicon Valley legends."

False News Travels Faster Than True Stories On Twitter

2018 Research from MIT

Research project finds humans, not bots, are primarily responsible for spread of misleading information.

“We found that falsehood diffuses significantly farther, faster, deeper, and more broadly than the truth, in all categories of information, and in many cases by an order of magnitude,” says Sinan Aral, a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management and co-author of a new paper detailing the findings."

Here is an article from Slate explaining the research.

 

Touchscreen

Watch slam poet Marshall Soulful Jones perform his poem called touchscreen.   Here are the lyrics.

Debrief Questions and ideas for your assessment (Google Form Here)

General thoughts about the film

1. What do you think the claim/thesis of the film was?   

2. What did you find most compelling in the film?

How much do you use social media? Does social media use you?

If you have a cell phone that monitors usage, check your usage - how many hours do you spend on it on average?  What apps do you use the most?  Have you ever tried to take a digital break or a digital detox?  Below are some resources with tips and food for thought:

• From Spike Blog, Take a Break From Tech, the Benefits of a Digital Detox (2021), "the average user touches his phone no less than 2,617 times per day"
• From Lifehacker, How to Take A Digital Break (2021)
• From Berkley's Greater Good Magazine, Five Reasons to Take a Break From Screens (2018),
• From CNN, Treat Your Phone Like a Bad Relationship and Breakup (2023)

Reclaiming Your Self; Actions you can take

From the documentary website: https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/take-action/

Here is a summary of the individual actions you can take today:

• Uninstall apps from my phone that are wasting your time such as social media apps and news apps.
• Turn off notifications. Turning off all notifications. I’m not using Google anymore, I’m using Qwant, which doesn’t store your search history.
• Never accept a video recommended to you on YouTube. Always choose. There are tons of Chrome extensions that remove recommendations. 
• Before you share, fact-check, consider the source, do that extra Google. If it seems like it’s something designed to really push your emotional buttons, like, it probably is. Essentially, you vote with your clicks. If you click on clickbait, you’re creating a financial incentive that perpetuates this existing system. 
• Make sure that you get lots of different kinds of information in your own life. I follow people on Twitter that I disagree with because I want to be exposed to different points of view.

• One Sec App will help you be mindful of how you use your smart phone. 

• Try to take a digital break and take note of how you are affected.  What do you experience while on the break?

3.  What action from above or from your own life might be beneficial to detoxifying social media use?

Here is a 2021 Study about the use of social media from the PEW

Open this link and think about what is true for you.  Below are some charts from the findings, some things to write about include your thoughts about the findings and in what ways these are either true or different for you:

 

4.  Compare your own social media use to the graph above.  Does your own experience reflect the findings in the graph?

Social Media Used for "News"
A 2021 PEW study showing social media use and news.  

More Americans get news on social media than from print newspapers. In 2018, one-in-five adults said they often get news on social media. And Facebook continues to dominate as the most common social media site used for news by Americans: About four-in-ten Americans (43%) get news on this site.  

5.  Which of the platforms in the graph above do you often get your news from?

The growing trend of getting news online is particularly concerning because a 2020 study found that:

Americans Who Mainly Get Their News on Social Media Are Less Engaged, Less Knowledgeable

Those who rely on social media for news are less likely to get the facts right about the coronavirus and politics and more likely to hear some unproven claims.

Social media users were the second most likely group to have low political knowledge.

Social media users were more likely to have heard 

conspiracy theories about the pandemic.

Social Media and You 

Have you ever stopped to think about what social media knows about you?  Think about the last time you bought something at a store.  If the salesperson was a stranger, would you tell them everything that your social media knows about you?  Look at this post from Tech News and the chart that they included from clario (below):

Anti-Social Media

Felmlee and Faris published Toxic Ties; Networks of Friendship, Dating and Cyber Victimization in Social Psychology Quarterly (2016) about the ways that social media can strain relationships among friends and dating partners.  LGBTQ teens are most at risk followed by straight cis-females and then lastly, straight cis-males.

 

Social Media Bingo

https://www.thesocialdilemma.com/start-a-conversation/

Other Resources:

Research and Effects of Digital Devices on Students

Besides being good for society, democracy, and living in a world with a shared reality, there are more personal and practical reasons for being mindful of social media.

See this post for a list of research-based conclusions why digital media is bad for your learning and your grades

One Sec App will help you be mindful of how you use your smart phone. 

Mark Granovetter's Strength of Weak Ties

Christakis is building on research from Mark Granovetter (1973) that has become one of the most cited sociology research articles ever.  It is called The Strength of Weak Ties.   His research found that an individual's strong ties are usually overlapping and thus redundant, so they do not provide connections as much as weak ties.  Weak ties extend an individual's network opening more connections.   Here is a review of how Granovetter's research applies to today's social media landscape.

...individuals with few weak ties will be deprived of information from distant parts of the social system and will be confined to the provincial news and views of their close friends. This deprivation will not only insulate them from the latest ideas and fashions but may put them in a disadvantaged position...

2.09mwf Social Media as Agent of Socialization Social Dilemma

Social Media as Socialization Agent: The Social Dilemma

 The rise of Social Media as a Socialization Agent

For decades, television was a dominant force of socialization.  Myriad research shows how dominant television, especially advertising has been and you can see more at this older post of mine here.  However, over the last 10 years, online social media has increasingly played an increasing and incredible role in influencing people.  For our next agent of socialization, we will examine social media and its role in socializing people.

Social media arguably has both positive and negative effects on society.  Whether you want to focus on either of those, it is clear that social media has had a transformational effect on American society and it is a strong agent of socialization.

Positive Effects

One of the positive effects of social media is detailed in this research by Miller, et. al. about how social media provides an outlet for non-whites experiencing racial discrimination.  From the introduction (full article here),

Racial coping can be understood through three main approaches: racial and ethnic identity development, social support, and confrontation and anger expression (Brondolo et al. 2009). We argue that social media allow these approaches to be carried on in the online sphere as a way to cope with both online and offline forms of discrimination. Thus, social media can be a site of expression for racial identity, a place where Black Americans and other communities come together to air grievances, seek support, and denounce those who oppress them. This is exactly what drives our research question: do those who experience higher levels of discrimination use more social media?

We argue that social media may be an additional outlet for coping with the negative effects of racial discrimination, as social media allows all aforementioned forms of coping, racial and ethnic identity development, social support, and confrontation and anger expression.

And a 2023 article finds that online gaming platforms can provide, 

...an opportunity for individuals to connect and communicate. Examining the impact of this communication on feelings of support and depressive symptoms is increasingly important as the popularity of gaming increases.

Social Dilemma

To explore the increasingly influential role that social media has, we will watch a documentary called The Social Dilemma.  

As you watch, think about the dynamic between nature and nurture and how social media interacts with that.  Look for ways that society is shaped by social media.

 

Film Summary

The Social Dilemma is a 2020 American docudrama that explores the rise of social media and the damage it has caused to society, focusing on its exploitation of its users for financial gain through surveillance capitalism and data mining, how its design is meant to nurture an addiction, its use in politics, its effect on mental health (including the mental health of adolescents and rising teen suicide rates), and its role in spreading conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and aiding groups such as flat-earthers.

A Note About Film Structure
There are three distinct settings in the documentary:

• Real people from tech industry discussing social media and their first-hand knowledge/experience.
• A drama used to show an average family and how social media affects them.
• A dark room with three people which simulates the artificial intelligence at play behind the scenes.

Watch the The Social Dilemma: 

watchdocumentaries.com or

Netflix 

Answer these questions as you watch:  Google Form Here

Resources 

Here is the website for the documentary.

Here is a full unedited transcript of the documentary from the website "scraps from the loft"

Here is my viewing guide which includes how to watch the documentary, what to do about it and the transcript edited down to important parts.

Here is a trailer available on Youtube, embedded below: