When a new technology or innovation is introduced, it takes a bit of time for our behaviors and laws to adjust to it. Imagine what it must have been like when the first car was invented; how much work needed to be done to pave roads and carve out meaningful traffic laws.
There were certainly problems of convenience and safety in the meantime. This gap between the introduction of technology and our adjustment to it is known as cultural lag—a phrase coined by sociologist William F Ogburn. This concept can help us understand both historical behavior and current problems.
Key components
First of all, what is culture? For Ogburn, culture was the “social heritage;” the things and ways of living that we inherit from those that came before us.
However, in his explanation of what cultural lag is, Ogburn was careful to make a distinction between two different parts of culture: material and non-material.
Material culture
Material culture is the physical objects that make up our culture. This includes things like buildings, clothes, art pieces, musical instruments, food and technology. Much of material culture changes quickly, and frequently.
Non-material culture
Non-material culture is the unseen or intangible aspects of our culture: things like norms, laws, rules, religious ideas, and general worldview. As you can imagine, these kinds of things take a lot of time to change.
Ogburn also distinguished between adaptive and non-adaptive forms of non-material culture. Some parts of non-material culture will change to keep up with material culture, while other parts will not.
For example, when factories became widespread and most people left their home during the day for work, the function of the family as a working group was phased out.
This would be the adaptive form of non-material culture. However, some parts of the function of the family, such as emotional support, did not change—this would be a non-adaptive element of the family.
Definition
Modern culture is made up of so many different interlinked parts—different ideas, places, symbols, technologies, foods, dances, lingo—and none of these things are changing at the same rate. Ogburn saw all the different parts of society as deeply interlinked.
Therefore, when one part of culture changes, the rest of society will have to adjust to accommodate the change. That period of misalignment between the change taking place and the adjustment of the rest of society is what cultural lag is.
At its most basic, cultural lag is the period of adjustment to a change in some part of society.
The concept of cultural lag is most commonly used to refer to societal adjustment to a new technology, but its original definition is much broader.
Any change that would require a period of adjustment would qualify as cultural lag, moving in any direction between material and non-material culture, or even staying within one part of culture.
For example, there can be changes within material culture that causes lag specifically in another part of material culture. For instance, the widespread use of electric vehicles when there is not yet a convenient infrastructure for charging them.
Cultural lag within two parts of non-material culture is also possible—consider that women are now encouraged to join the work force, even as research still shows that they bear the brunt of the responsibility for housework and childcare.
There can also be a lag of material culture behind non-material culture. For example, when advanced theories in the field of astronomy can’t be evaluated because our machinery for viewing the stars isn’t yet powerful enough.
All of these forms of cultural lag are possible, but Ogburn thought that a change in material culture forcing a change in non-material culture was the most common. Most modern examples of this phenomenon follow this framework, including the examples provided below.
Given how variable instances of cultural lag can be, it is an incredibly common phenomenon. However, Ogburn thought that most instances of cultural lag were so slight that they were imperceptible in the long run.
After all, new inventions and changes to our physical reality happen every day, and they mostly don’t cause too much trouble, if any at all.
However, Ogburn also made the sinister prediction that some instances of cultural lag would have such a drastic effect as to threaten universal disaster.
Causes
Ogburn wrote that there were three causes of the kinds of social change that would trigger cultural lag. The first is diffusion, when some kind of technology or way of doing things enters a cultural ecosystem by way of globalization. The second is discovery—when we stumble across resources or information that cause social change.
However, Ogburn thought that the most important catalyzer of change was the third type, invention. He said that invention was an act of combining existing cultural elements to form something new. For example, by combining the wheel and the steam engine to invent the train.
Naturally, as more technologies and tools come into existence, the possibility for different combinations among them increases. This is why Ogburn thought that the accumulation of material culture was a catalyst for invention. He also thought that this growth would turn out to be exponential.
This part of Ogburn’s theory has some strong empirical backup. There is a well-known theorem known as Moore’s Law which identified that technology develops at an exponential rate, with computer processing power doubling every 2 years.
With the advent of recent artificial intelligence technologies, that time frame has shortened so that computing power doubles every 3.4 months. Invention rates seem to be indeed exponential.
The causes of social change are only one part of what causes cultural lag. We must also consider why it takes societies so long to adjust to these changes. Why are we not more expedient in changing our laws and norms to accommodate new technology?
Ogburn thought that non-material culture was actively resistant to change. He said that worldviews and ideas are stubborn— on both an individual and societal level— especially in comparison to how fast technology changes.
Sometimes individuals resist change out of fear of the unknown, and sometimes governments find it too onerous to attempt to change longstanding bureaucratic policy.
With the constant introduction of new technologies, it is difficult for societies to even decide how those technologies should be used, let alone put together a comprehensive set of laws and norms around the use of the technology. The examples below explore this challenge.
Examples
These examples illustrate the concept of cultural lag, where societal values, norms, and institutions struggle to keep pace with rapid technological and social changes, resulting in various challenges and disparities.
- AI and Automation: Artificial intelligence has become so advanced that it is now capable of replacing human workers in many jobs. Already, familiar technologies such as automated factory machines and self-check-out in grocery stores have caused unemployment.
The economy and education system still has not shifted to reskill these workers and place them sustainably elsewhere in the workforce. - The Internet and digital divide: Almost 40 percent of the world’s population has never used the internet or has no way to access it. Meanwhile, the average American uses the internet for just under seven hours a day. This difference in access to technology between two groups is known as the digital divide.
As new internet-based technologies (like ChatGPT, for example) are released, those with the internet gain their benefits, while there are entire swaths of the global population that fall further behind. The infrastructure needed to connect isolated populations to the internet has simply not yet materialized. - Climate change and environment: The environment also provides a compelling example of cultural lag. New inventions that emit greenhouse gases or require massive uses of resources have entered the economy and started to have an impact on global temperature.
The global response so far has been far too modest and subdued to prevent the disastrous consequences of global warming. Global regulatory bodies are lagging behind the technologies and ways of living that are causing climate change. - Medical advancements and bioethics: Recent medical advancements such as the ability for doctors to prescreen infants for genetic diseases and potentially engage in genome alteration leave society with many questions that have yet to be answered.
What should we be allowed to test for? If a disease is found, should we be able to alter the genes of that child to remove it? Should we be able to use this technology to edit genes in pursuit of specific aesthetics or abilities in newborns?
In November 2018, Chinese biophysicist He Jiankui announced that the first genetically altered humans had been born—two twin girls. He removed a gene from their DNA in an attempt to create genetic resistance to HIV, and reported that they were both born healthy.
However, He Jiankui’s actions met widespread backlash, revealing the gap between the capabilities of our technology and our underdeveloped thinking on how to regulate it. This is a clear and obvious case of cultural lag. - Cryptocurrency and taxation/regulation: Cryptocurrency is a relatively new form of digital asset. Its function is based on digital technologies that allow for verified online purchases without the need for a bank. As use of these digital currencies become more mainstream, regulation measures have lagged behind.
A likely cause for this is that this technology is not very well understood by lawmakers or the general public, which makes the generation of tax interventions and regulatory bodies quite difficult. - Social media and big data: The effect that recent technological innovations have had on privacy is a perfect example of cultural lag. Suddenly, the technologies and websites that many of use every day were able to collect vast swaths of data on our activities.
Cultural lag manifested in a pretty commonplace lack of awareness among users as to what data was being collected, how and for what purpose.
Once people realized on a broad scale what is happening with their personal data, there has been an even more prolonged lag in response—both in terms of individual level changes in behavior to protect personal data, and to government-level regulations of what kind of data can be used and how. - Remote work: Following the COVID-19 pandemic, a full 44% of British people work from home for at least part of the workweek. In February of 2020, only 5.7% of the population worked exclusively at home. Considering this vast change in the landscape of working location, and how quickly that change happened, it is unsurprising that some symptoms of cultural lag have accompanied that change.
Traditional methods of tracking productivity, supervising employees, and billing work hours are not as viable in a remote work context, and businesses are still adjusting their management styles to fit the new normal. - Online voting: Voting by paper ballot is an arduous and expensive task for government agencies to maintain. The technology for online voting is available, and it is much cheaper and more convenient for voters and administrative agencies.
However, laws to regulate use of digital voting technologies are not in place, and public trust of these technologies is not at a point where widespread implementation is yet feasible.
Neither the U.K. nor the U.S. uses online voting, and conversations around voter verification and election verification with these technologies abound. - Autonomous vehicles: The technology for autonomous vehicles is already widely available and in testing stages. However, the typical laws used to regulate driver behavior on the road become obsolete when a computer is driving.
In 2018, the first recorded fatality that involved a self-driving car (owned and operated by Uber) spurred questions not only around the safety of self-driving cars, but also on culpability in the event of a traffic accident. Was the safety driver at fault? Was Uber at fault? These questions highlight the gaps in legal thinking that need to be filled in order to adjust to the reality of co-existing with autonomous vehicles.
Further, as vehicles become fully autonomous (meaning no safety driver is behind the wheel) the computer that operates the car may find itself in situations where it must make a moral decision. If there is a pedestrian in the street and the car must either hit and kill the pedestrian, or turn and crash into a wall, killing the passengers, what should it do? Does it matter how many people are in the car?
Does it matter if the pedestrian was jaywalking? These questions do not have a legal answer, a good sign of cultural lag. - Remote medical services and licensing: In the United States, the laws around the practice of medicine usually require that a medical provider be licensed in the state where the patient is physically located during the appointment. During COVID-19, many states waved this requirement.
However, these waivers have since expired, even as the reliance on telemedicine continues—a phenomenon that is unlikely to reverse. This leaves patients in absurd situations, such as driving hours to park just over the state border to take a remote appointment from their car.
Long-term, sustainable legal solutions to the telemedicine licensing crisis do not yet exist, highlighting that society has yet to adjust to this change in culture.
Implications
Social inequality and conflict
Access to newly introduced technologies is, of course, not universal. The groups that are more exposed to new inventions will adjust more quickly to the change than those who have not yet had the chance to access it. Therefore, the more exposed groups feel the change less acutely.
This also means that the negative consequences of cultural lag are not spread evenly among all members of a society. Some groups of society are more vulnerable to the raw impacts of cultural lag, whether by chance or by systematic disadvantage. They are left to deal with change without the needed infrastructure.
Differing experiences among social groups can also lead to disagreement on how to tackle it. As the examples illustrated, many instances of cultural lag include a lack of consensus on how to manage new technologies.
This lack of consensus can lead to social conflict, as those with differing opinions clash on questions of profound importance for them.
Educational disparities
A large part of adjusting to societal change is ensuring that schools are teaching students the relevant skills and information needed to thrive in a changed world.
If the curricula offered in schools does not account for new technologies, inventions, and ways of doing things, students will be ill-prepared to navigate the world.
This manifestation of cultural lag is self-reinforcing—schools struggle to adjust to the way the world has changed, and as a result students themselves are unable to adjust to the ways that the world has changed. Every school is different, so this manifests in vastly different educational outcomes across the country.
Anxiety and stress
It can be quite distressing for anyone, in any context, when things change very quickly; especially of things are changing both quickly and profoundly.
Trying to manage using a new computer you are unfamiliar with, or using an automated kiosk for the first time can be overwhelming.
Further, if these changes are happening on a large scale—where you are facing very new technologies very frequently, this can be deeply distressing. Anxiety may be a blunt result of cultural lag.
Identity crises
We define our identities in relation to our outside world, deciding where we belong and why. When the outside world—both materially and culturally—is changing rapidly, it can be difficult to relate to the new world that we have been presented with.
Who am I? What am I meant to be doing? These essential human questions are made further murky and difficult by the effects of cultural lag.
