Popular culture. It's a broad topic. Fortunately, it can be narrowed down and broken apart. Generally, pop culture can be seen as the media and entertainment industry and the people involved in it. These are two very different sides of the same coin, and they each have their own role in society. The products and things themselves are obviously intended to entertain or enrich. The people, on the other hand, are a more secondary aspect of the culture. Both of these parts can be positive influences, or they can make life as a whole worse. This is the reason why it is difficult to pinpoint just what kind of an effect popular culture has on the world, but it is my belief that it is, overall, a good one. This is mainly because the larger aspect of the media—the media itself—is mostly beneficial. Even if the celebrity aspect can have negative effects on people, it is only a small part of the vague generality that is popular culture.

Celebrities serve a strange purpose in today's society. In the confines of their work, they can do great good, and make things that improve people's lives. However, it sometimes seems that in the public eye, the more salient side of things is what celebrities do in the real world. This is a surreal trend, and it ultimately leads to celebrities being treated in a weirdly obsessive manner. An actor could contribute a great triumph to film through their work, but if they have an affair it'll be on magazine headlines and plastered all over the internet. They'll be seen for a scandal, and not for their successes. This is one of the only new things about celebrities, and it's in part due to the new connectedness of the modern world. It is a disturbing trend, and leads to role models being displayed in a very warped, two-dimensional manner. We're worried about what example the rich and famous set, but we rarely talk about any good points of it, and instead exacerbate it with all the wrong and indecent points. Luckily, this is something of a secondary effect of today's pop culture.

The primary effect of popular culture today is this: we are getting smarter. Many studies and plenty of data support the notion that there is a general increase in human intelligence over time (take the Flynn Effect, for example). Between video games, movies and TV, and the internet, entertainment is not only becoming better and more immersive, but it is becoming more nutritional. Over time, popular culture is becoming more complex and more valuable to people's growth and development (Steven Johnson wrote a fantastic book on this idea, I highly recommend it). Media and entertainment challenge our minds, provide an escape and an outlet, and spark discussion and interaction. There are very few downsides to today's pop culture. Among those may be a few bad influences or content moving towards the lowest-common-denominator, but those examples are few and far between. Most instances of popular culture today have a positive effect on their consumers. This is even true for the bad ones. From middle-of-the-pack television shows, to rushed and poorly made video games, to movies that flop at the box office, even our lower quality media is good for us, challenging our cognition in unique ways and shifting our perception quickly. These benefits are even more powerful when it comes to the good media. There are still plenty of reasons why you should get outside into the real world, but screen time may not be as bad as we were led to believe.