Globalizaton has become one of the central issues of discussion in many disciplines, including psychology. The latter is particularly concerned about how globalization influences the identity that usually develops during adolescence, and how the global culture affects the local ones. Previously the differences between teenagers across the world, including the differences in their perception of the world, family and themselves, were the results of the influence of local cultures. However, today they are developing the increasing number of similarities in behavior and perception than ever before, often discarding their local cultures in favor of the global one. Unfortunately, this tendency can have negative outcomes, such identity confusion and identity loss. In his article, Jeffrey Arnett (2002) discusses the influence of globalization on identity and the problems it entails, as well as presents a series of the most relevant questions that need to be studied deeply by psychologists across the world.
Arnett (2002) studies the influence of globalization on identity on the example of adolescents because the perception of oneself and the world forms during the teenage years, when children are most susceptive to external influences. Indeed, nowadays, more and more children of this age are very actively engaged in global online community and social networks that surpass all borders and unite children all over the world that often join the Internet community to find friends with similar interests. This online life along with television exposes teenagers to global culture that is predominantly based on Western values because of the Western countries being the driving force behind globalization (Arnett, 2002, p 779). The examples of how globalization has changed teenage life across the globe, as presented in Arnett’s article, are the best proof that Asian, African, American and European adolescents are adopting similar behavioral patterns and share same interests and values. My personal experience also supports these ideas because watching TV and being an active Internet user since teenage years made me exposed to the global culture, including pop- and rock-music, movies from across the world and other forms of entertainment that vividly promote Western values and worldview. At the same time, discovering news and information about world cultures made me become more of a global citizen and feel less bound to my own country and culture, thus experiencing delocalization. My local culture has changed significantly during the last half a century under the influence of globalization as well. This way, in Arnett’s words (2002), I have developed a hybrid identity that combines the local culture affected by world trends and the global culture (p. 778).
Unfortunately, many people feel lost in this world because of globalization, being deprived of the stability of the local culture, still feeling that the global culture values are yet not adopted in the countries such people live. Loss and confusion of identity have been previously discussed in psychology, including by Erich Fromm, who viewed the development of identity as one of the stages of human development. Such side-effect of globalization is, thus, very important to psychologists, because it entails numerous psychological problems, including increased number of mental disorders and even suicide. In my personal experience, I have met a lot of young adults, who could not find their place in life for a very long time, feeling very unstable and being very neurotic. Many of them were still bound to the local cultures, but could no longer live happily in them because their global values that conflicted with the local values were dominant. For this reason, their search of identity lasted for a longer time than their predecessors’, and many of them still search for identity, although they have passed their mid-twenties. At the same time, many teenagers I knew chose to join various subcultures in order to create the feeling of identity and belonging. Irony is that teenagers from all over the world chose the same subcultures for the same purpose, because it was a globalization trend, and they were, thus, united by globalization, while wanting to avoid its influence.
Globalization affects every person of the world, regardless of where such person lives and of his or her social status. Poor and rich are equally influenced by the erasure of cultural borders, although many do not notice this trend or reject it. In these rocky times, people develop various psychological problems, whose solution depends on further development of psychological thought. For this reason, the way psychology solves these problems will influence the way people will feel in the future and the way people will perceive themselves and the world, since psychology helps people to understand the world and make sense of it. For this reason, it is very important that future researches are aimed at scientific exploration of the influence of globalization on identity and at prediction of the future trends.
References
Arnett, J. J. (2002). The psychology of globalization. American Psychologist, 57(10), 774-783.
