Social constructs vs social norms

A while ago a friend asked me to explain the difference between a social construct and a social norm. Since many people on social media seemed to find my answer helpful, I’m sharing it here as well.

I would say the main thing to emphasize about norms is that they are a type of rule. Norms are a set of shared, informal expectations about how and in what ways individuals are meant to behave in society. They regulate our behaviour by creating standards for how we should be. Some are more setting specific, like using utensils to eat. Some are more general, like saying please and thank you. They are socially constructed because they are a product of the ideas and values that people hold and share as a group. They also only exist insofar as some group of people believes that a certain behavioural norm is useful or valuable in some way. However, not all social constructs are norms, because not all social constructs are rules, or can be summarized in terms of the rules they might utilize. Social constructs can also be abstract ideas/concepts, categories, and identities. There are norms that reflect and govern our understanding of gender, but gender is also an identity and a category of person, not just simply a set of behavioural expectations, although it includes such expectations. Less complicately, the idea of money is a social construct, but the use or non-use of money is a norm. Likewise, a religion is defined by the ideas and spiritual narrative it expresses and advocates, while adherence to a particular religion might be a norm.