Cultural Lag: 10 Examples & Easy Definition

Cultural lag is a sociological idea introduced by William Ogburn. It describes the delay that happens when material culture, like technology and inventions, changes faster than non-material culture, such as laws, values, and social norms. This lag can create social problems and tensions – for example, when new medical technologies raise ethical questions society hasn’t fully addressed yet.

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 includes the physical and tangible objects of society: buildings, clothing, food, tools, machines, art, and especially technology.

Because new inventions and products can spread quickly, material culture often changes at a rapid pace – sometimes within months.

Non-material culture

Nonmaterial culture refers to the intangible aspects of life, such as norms, values, beliefs, laws, moral codes, religious ideas, and worldviews.

As you can imagine, these kinds of things take a lot of time to change. 

These elements are deeply rooted in tradition and identity, which makes them slower to shift compared to material culture.

Adaptive vs. Non-Adaptive Elements

Within nonmaterial culture, some parts are adaptive—they adjust in response to new technologies or practices.

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.

Other elements are non-adaptive—they persist despite social change. The family, for instance, continues to provide emotional support even though its economic function diminished.

The “Lag”

Cultural lag occurs when material culture advances faster than nonmaterial culture can adapt.

A new invention or practice often demands changes in values, laws, or institutions, but these adjustments typically come later.

This delay can create friction, confusion, or even social problems until nonmaterial culture “catches up.”

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.

Technology and Work

• AI and Automation: Artificial intelligence and robotics now replace human workers in many sectors, from factories to retail. While machines boost efficiency, education and labor systems have lagged in reskilling displaced workers for sustainable employment.
• Remote Work: The COVID-19 pandemic led to a sudden surge in remote work, but traditional methods of supervision, productivity tracking, and workplace culture have not fully adapted, leaving businesses struggling to define “the new normal.”

Digital Society

• Internet and Digital Divide: Nearly 40% of the world’s population still lacks internet access, while others spend hours online daily. As new tools like ChatGPT expand opportunities, those without access fall further behind—a stark example of infrastructure lag.
• Big Data: Platforms collect vast amounts of personal information, but users and governments were slow to grasp the scope of data harvesting. Public awareness and privacy regulations continue to trail far behind technological capacity.
• Social Media: Platforms spread information instantly, but regulations around privacy, misinformation, and mental health impacts lag far behind their influence on daily life.
• Online Voting: While secure online voting technology exists, legal frameworks and public trust remain too underdeveloped for widespread adoption, leaving elections tied to outdated paper-based systems.
• Cryptocurrency: Digital currencies allow peer-to-peer transactions without banks, but regulation and taxation struggle to keep up. Lawmakers’ limited understanding of the technology slows the development of coherent policies.

Science and Medicine

• Medical Advancements and Bioethics: Gene editing technologies can screen or even alter embryos, raising ethical questions society has not resolved. The case of the first genetically modified babies in 2018 exposed the lack of consensus and clear regulation.
• Telemedicine and Licensing: During COVID-19, cross-state licensing rules for doctors were temporarily relaxed in the U.S. But as demand for remote care continues, long-term legal frameworks remain unsettled.
• Reproductive Technology and Custody Law: Advances in fertility treatments for same-sex couples highlight gaps in custody law, which has been slow to recognize nontraditional families.

Environment and Infrastructure

• Climate Change: Industrial technologies emitting greenhouse gases have outpaced international agreements and regulations. Despite scientific consensus, the global policy response remains weak compared to the scale of the problem.
• Infrastructure: Much of the U.S. transportation and city infrastructure was built for a past era and struggles with today’s demands—traffic, pollution, and population density—illustrating a slow adaptation to modern needs.

Law and Social Norms

• Industrial Accidents and Compensation: In the early Industrial Revolution, workers injured in factories had little legal recourse. It took decades for workers’ compensation laws to catch up with new industrial realities.
• Digital Copyright: The Napster lawsuits of the late 1990s showed how music-sharing technologies advanced faster than copyright law, forcing courts to improvise responses.
• Generational Gaps: Older generations often struggle to adapt to rapidly changing digital tools, widening divides in skills and opportunities despite the widespread availability of technology.

Emerging Technologies

• Autonomous Vehicles: Self-driving cars already operate in test settings, but laws designed for human drivers fail to address liability and ethical dilemmas, such as how vehicles should act in life-or-death scenarios.

Causes

Ogburn argued that cultural lag happens because material culture tends to change much faster than nonmaterial culture.

He identified three main sources of social change that drive this imbalance.

Sources of Change

• Diffusion: New ideas, practices, or technologies spread across societies through contact and globalization.
• Discovery: The identification of new resources or knowledge—such as electricity or DNA—reshapes cultural possibilities.
• Invention: The most powerful driver, according to Ogburn, occurs when existing cultural elements are combined to create something new. For example, the wheel and the steam engine together produced the train. As technologies accumulate, so do the potential combinations, making invention increasingly frequent.

This idea anticipates what we now observe in technology: exponential growth.

Moore’s Law, for instance, shows that computing power doubled roughly every two years, while the rise of artificial intelligence has accelerated this pace even further.

Resistance to Change

If material culture evolves so quickly, why doesn’t nonmaterial culture keep up? Ogburn believed that worldviews, norms, and institutions are inherently resistant to change.

Values and traditions are deeply embedded in society, and both individuals and governments may resist altering them:

• Individuals often fear the unknown or feel attached to familiar ways of life.
• Institutions, such as bureaucracies or legal systems, find it difficult to overhaul longstanding rules and procedures.

This mismatch creates the “lag.”

While technologies may be introduced rapidly, the debates, decisions, and policies needed to govern their use unfold much more slowly.

As a result, society often grapples with uncertainty, conflict, or inequality until nonmaterial culture eventually adjusts.

Implications

Cultural lag creates a gap between what technology makes possible and what society is prepared to handle. This delay has several consequences:

• Conflict: Competing interests often clash over how to respond to innovation. For instance, debates about climate change policy pit industries reliant on fossil fuels against activists and policymakers pushing for green energy.
• Ethical Debates: New technologies raise moral questions society has not yet resolved. Gene editing, for example, provokes dilemmas about whether altering embryos to prevent disease—or enhance traits—should be allowed.
• Adaptation Struggles: Institutions may fail to keep up with rapid change. The rise of AI and automation has displaced workers faster than education and job-training systems can reskill them.
• Inequality: Unequal access to technology creates gaps in opportunity. The digital divide shows how those without internet access are left behind as online tools and platforms, such as remote education and AI applications, become mainstream.
• Policy Gaps: Outdated laws often fail to regulate new practices effectively. Cryptocurrency highlights this problem, as governments struggle to design taxation and oversight systems for an unfamiliar financial technology.

How does cultural lag create social maladjustment and conflict?

Cultural lag produces social maladjustment when rapid changes in technology or material culture disrupt established ways of life faster than people, institutions, and values can adapt.

This misalignment creates a sense of disorientation—society feels “out of step” with itself.

For example, new workplace technologies may demand skills that schools are not yet teaching, leaving workers underprepared and anxious.

Conflict arises because different groups adjust to change at different speeds.

Those who benefit from innovations may push for quick adoption, while others resist because of fear, lack of access, or conflicting values.

Disagreements over issues like climate change policy, data privacy, or reproductive technologies often stem from this lag between innovation and social consensus.

As a result, cultural lag can fuel inequality, ethical debates, and prolonged struggles over how society should adapt.

How does cultural lag affect inequality between different groups or generations?

Cultural lag often amplifies existing inequalities because not everyone has the same access to new technologies or the same ability to adapt to change.

Groups with greater wealth, education, or geographic advantages usually benefit first from innovations, while disadvantaged groups face the disruptions more directly.

For example, people without reliable internet access are excluded from many opportunities in education, work, and healthcare, widening the digital divide.

Generational differences also emerge.

Younger generations typically adopt new technologies quickly, while older generations may be slower to adjust, creating gaps in skills, communication styles, and cultural values.

These differences can lead to misunderstandings, reduced employment opportunities for some groups, and even conflict over how technologies should be regulated or used.

In both cases, cultural lag does not just create delays in adaptation—it distributes those delays unevenly, leaving some groups vulnerable while others gain a head start.

Critical Evaluation of Cultural Lag

1. Deterministic Perspective

It is argued that Ogburn’s theory of cultural lag is too deterministic.

By emphasizing the idea that material culture drives all change and that nonmaterial culture merely lags behind, Ogburn downplays the possibility that ideas, values, or social movements can also lead cultural change.

For example, civil rights reforms or feminist movements were not the result of a new invention but of shifting values and collective action.

This suggests that cultural lag theory may oversimplify the dynamics of cultural change, limiting its explanatory power.

While it is useful for highlighting delays in adaptation, it risks ignoring the agency of individuals and groups in shaping society.

2. Historical Evidence

Evidence from history supports Ogburn’s claim that material changes often outpace nonmaterial adaptation.

The Industrial Revolution introduced new machines and factory systems that fundamentally changed how people lived and worked.

Yet, social institutions—such as labor laws, education systems, and workers’ rights protections—lagged far behind, creating unsafe conditions and social unrest.

This provides strong empirical grounding for the concept of cultural lag, showing that it captures an important recurring pattern in human societies.

However, the reliance on historical examples may also make the theory seem backward-looking rather than predictive.

3. Contemporary Relevance

A strength of the cultural lag concept is its continued relevance in the modern world.

From AI to climate change to biotechnology, today’s innovations outpace the laws, values, and regulations meant to govern them.

For example, AI systems can now generate convincing media, but governments are still debating how to regulate misinformation or deepfakes.

This shows that cultural lag remains a valuable framework for analyzing present-day challenges, helping policymakers, educators, and the public anticipate potential social problems.

However, the breadth of its application may also make it too general to offer concrete solutions.

4. Neglect of Global Variation

Cultural lag theory has been criticized for focusing too narrowly on Western, industrial societies.

Ogburn developed the theory in early 20th-century America, where technological innovation was central to cultural development.

In many non-industrial or indigenous societies, however, social change may not be primarily driven by material inventions, and spiritual or ecological values may play a larger role.

This limits the universal applicability of cultural lag theory.

While still useful, it should be applied cautiously and supplemented with perspectives that account for cultural diversity and non-technological drivers of change.

Reading List

Durkheim, É. (1984). The division of labor in society (W. D. Halls, Trans.). Free Press. (Original work published 1893)

Moore, G. E. (1965). Cramming more components onto integrated circuits. Electronics, 38(8), 114–117.

Ogburn, W. F. (1922). Social change with respect to culture and original nature. B.W. Huebsch.

Selwyn, N. (2016). Education and technology: Key issues and debates (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury.

Turkle, S. (2017). Alone together: Why we expect more from technology and less from each other. Basic Books.

Winner, L. (1986). The whale and the reactor: A search for limits in an age of high technology. University of Chicago Press.