Conclusions

Through this project, I have discovered many things. I've always considered deviance and crime as being the same things. Crime resides within deviance, however not all deviance is crime. The family dynamic is changing, but it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Social media, whether good or bad, is here to stay. Thanks for the time!

Teens and Social Media

The Positives and the Negatives

First the negatives. Next the positives. Personally, I believe that Facebook and stuff can be addictive, but aspects such as connections with family members are positive.

Lies Lies Lies

It's really crazy to me how so many people just try so hard to put on for the social media world! So many people living a lie. ----Unkown I have so many friends that put so much effort into making a presence in the Social world. If they don't go on Facebook, they freak out, and can't go through the day without a mental breakdown. I don't have too much of a problem considering that I mainly use Facebook to connect with far away family members and friends.

Social Media and Teens

I got a Facebook when I was 14 years old. Since then, I've had a complicated up and down relationship with the social media website. Today, kids and adults everywhere have connected through various social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, etc. Some see it as a good thing, others a bad thing. But which is it? I will be looking at whether this is a good thing, or is Facebook more trouble than it's worth?
Click me!

Divorce and Children

A great presentation on the effect of divorce on children.

Different Types of Families

I was interested at looking at different family dynamics from around the world and I happened across this article from Kansas State University. It looks at children and marriages, and is very in depth into families in other cultures.
Here is another article that talks about a study done on the adult children of gay and lesbian parents. It clearly shows the results and is very interesting to study.

Conventional Families

Better a loving single-parent family than a 'conventional' family where the parents hate each other and the father is a demagogue.

        ---Moby

This expresses my feelings on modern society and traditional families. For decades, people have looked down upon single mothers and fathers, not understanding how a family like that could possibly work. But people need to change their outlook on things like single parents and homosexual couples. They are something that are common today, and regardless of what many think, the children produced from those kinds of family dynamics tend to be just as any other children out there.

The Definition of a Modern Family

What is in a family? Up above is a picture of my family, including my parents, siblings, uncle and aunts, and my grandparents  We are far from a traditional family; I was born when my mother was 17 in 1993. I have ten siblings in total, and have an interesting familial set up. My mother never stayed with my father, and married at eighteen to a man who eventually adopted me as his daughter. Together, they had 3 children, and divorced when I was 12. Meanwhile, my biological father married someone who already had a son, and together they had 2 more children. Both my mother and adopted father remarried. My adopted father married someone with a daughter a year older than me. My mother married a man with a younger daughter, and they together had 2 more children together. So, basically, I have 10 siblings, and a bit of a complicated family situation. I love it, but it is far from being traditional.

I found an article about changing family dynamics and found it to be very relevant. It explains how children of same sex couples turn out and how they are raised. Check it out here!
 

More and more deviance!

I discovered this video on YouTube and I thought that it was very fitting. It depicts different kinds of deviants in modern society.

Decline in Violent Crimes

(photo courtesy of newyorkshitty.com)

   Hey all! There's some good news for all of mankind: violent crime has gone down significantly! In fact, since 1994, violent crime has gone down a whopping two thirds (2/3). On this website here, it gives you a brief collection of data from various sources, and includes a few links of some graphs to prove that this is happening. Wondering why? Well, go to this website here. This article gives a hypothesis of 6 reasons that they believe that this is happening, and quite believable and research-able ones at that.

Everyone's a Deviant

"Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."
Hannah Arendt 
(courtesy of brainyquote.com)

    After years of my father telling me that there were only two groups of people in the world, deviants and non-deviants, I finally discovered that there was a difference between a deviant and a criminal. Everyone is a deviant in their own way; a criminal is someone who breaks laws that are established by government. A deviant is someone who acts differently compared to societies standards. For instance, I may not be a criminal, but I do not follow certain social norms when it comes to gender. I may like cooking, Paris, and sparkly things, however I do enjoy reading comics, worshiping Batman, and playing the occasional video game. Since these are things that are most commonly associated with the male gender, I am therefore a deviant. Anyone who says that they are in no way, shape, or form a deviant, obviously are kidding themselves.

My Father's Daughter

   Life has never been easy for me, as my father is a Crime Scene Investigator and a Police Officer. I've never been able to get away with the smallest of things; any lie or wrong doing was almost immediately caught by him. However difficult life may have seemed at the time, my father raised me to be a good, productive citizen. He taught me right from wrong, or what was considered deviance and what was considered to be socially acceptable behavior.

 

                                                      (Left to right: me, my step-mother, and my father)
      Going to college and joining a sorority has exposed me to almost all of the behavior that my father told me was "bad". It was quite a shock; I knew that things like this went on, I just didn't know that there was practically another culture built around deviant behavior. I chose this as my first topic as it has had a big impact on my life growing up, the present, and my future.

    Being a part of the Greek system, I figured that I would focus on the deviance that so plainly occurs within. I found an article from the University of Missouri discussing drinking within fraternities and sororities. However, they have discovered that this is something that most Greeks only experiment heavily with in their college years. It also shows that those who join the Greek system are more likely to be heavy drinkers than students outside of it. The article explains why this happens, and also the risks included with heavy drinking in the Greek system. You can follow a link to the article here.

                                                                (photo courtesy of reallychill.org)

Welcome!

Hello all, and welcome to my blog! My name is Britnae Tregellas. I grew up in Meridian, Idaho and I am currently 19 years old. My favorite pastimes include reading, writing, taking walks, and watching movies with my Alpha Gam sisters. I am currently a freshmen at the University of Idaho and am majoring in sociology with an emphasis in criminology. The field of sociology has always been quite appealing to me. I've always enjoyed learning about people and society, whether they be past or present. Sociology is a whole new way of looking at society through research and statistics. I personally believe that sociology is important in helping us sort out the confusion in our lives. It can help us understand our own people, our ancestors' cultures, and other people's cultures. It clears the mist, and gives us a  clear and concise understanding of life. I will later on choose two subjects within our sociology textbook, Sociology: the Essentials, and expand on them throughout this semester. Stay tuned!