How Streaming Changed the Way We Remember Culture, According to a UCO Sociologist

As streaming platforms become the dominant way people watch movies, listen to music, and read books, University of Central Oklahoma associate professor Leeda Copley says the shift has reshaped not only what people consume, but how they remember culture itself.

What once relied on physical objects, videos, albums, books, and the rituals built around them have become more fragmented and fleeting in the digital era.

Copley, who teaches Sociology, Gerontology, and Substance Abuse Studies and joined UCO’s faculty in 2010, often observes how generational differences shape students’ relationships to media. Her perspective is informed both by her teaching and her research into how people make meaning through cultural habits.

Physical Media as a Cultural Anchor

For many generations, physical media was tied to memory in a very literal way. Families structured routines around movie nights, album listens, rental store visits, or the slow building of shelves full of DVDs and books. People often associate specific memories with the objects themselves: a particular cover, a disc case, a book spine, or the familiar placement of titles on a family shelf.

Copley explains that these objects helped anchor memories because they were visible reminders of past experiences. Their physical presence reinforced the recollection of who people watched something with, when they did, or what life felt like at the time. This was especially true across older generations who grew up when physical media was the norm.

Streaming and the Loss of Ritual

Streaming, she notes, disrupts many of those shared rituals. Instead of planned evenings built around one film or album, people often scroll through dozens of options, switch between titles quickly, or watch while multitasking. Media becomes something consumed in fragments, often without the focused attention that physical formats once encouraged.

Students today frequently describe media as something they put on “in the background,” reflecting a broader cultural shift toward constant choice and constant consumption. In this environment, it becomes more difficult for any single piece of media to root itself in memory with the same clarity or emotional weight.

Generational Gaps in Media Memory

Copley sees clear generational differences in how her students engage with media. Many of them have little experience with physical formats and instead grew up in an era where most content was available instantly on a screen. As a result, their cultural memories are often tied less to tangible objects and more to digital platforms, algorithmic recommendations, or online trends.

Her background in Gerontology informs this observation: memory is strengthened by repetition, sensory cues, and environment. Physical media once provided all three. Streaming, by contrast, often removes the environmental context—there is no shelf, no disc, no book to encounter later and spark recollection.

An Unstable Archive

Another major difference is stability. Physical media collections stay where they are until someone removes them. Streaming libraries, however, change constantly. Content disappears due to licensing issues, corporate decisions, or cost-cutting measures, often without warning. Copley points out that this instability affects how people relate to the material. It is difficult to form strong attachments to media that may vanish the next month or next year.

For older adults, the idea that “a favorite film might just disappear” is still jarring. For younger generations, it is almost expected.

New Habits for a New Media Landscape

Copley doesn’t argue that streaming is inherently negative. Instead, she highlights its sociological impact: the loss of shared rituals, the weakening of sensory memory cues, and the increasing dependency on corporations to preserve culture.

The challenge, she suggests, is that people may need to find new ways to ground their media experiences—whether that means creating intentional viewing routines, periodically buying physical copies of favorite works, or simply paying more attention to how they engage with the stories that matter to them.

In a landscape defined by constant choice and constant change, remembering culture may now require conscious effort.