Consumerism

When I was 18 years old, I was forced into an intervention. The reason? Well, there were many but one of the main being that I was spending too much time on the phone. Now, I can understand that many, especially younger people may be outraged and deny the fact that the time they spend on the phone is not, in fact too much. But no amount of defending will change statistics, no amount of self-delusion changes facts. And the fact was, that I was indeed spending a lot of time on my phone.

The argument raised against me, was that I was not being productive. I was spending all my time, consuming things around me and not creating anything. This is not just in context to writing, or making art. It meant, that instead of trying to contribute to something, I was content with letting things happen around me and accepting them as they were. It meant that instead of spending my time doing something that would benefit me constructively, I was wiling it away by doing things that were not allowing me to learn anything new. And, it turned out to be true. The intervention had, to an extent, worked. It had forced me to introspect, to think about what I had been doing, and how I had been spending my time. It also made me think about consumerism and overconsumption as a whole.

It has been more than two years since that incident. To say the least, the last two years have been eye-opening. In this short essay, I will touch upon consumerism in the context of digital media and internet content. I will also talk about how the platform "Instagram" influenced me, the good, the bad, and the ugly. In addition to this, I will share my thoughts about overconsumption and the effect it has on one's body, mind, and life.

According to the Oxford Learner's Dictionary, consumerism is defined as the buying and using of goods and services; the belief that it is good for a society or a person to buy and use a large quantity of goods and services. According to Merriam-Webster, it is the theory that increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable or the promotion of the consumer's interests. Both definitions show that the essence of consumerism is that buying things is good, for you and the economy. Now while this may be good for the economy, it certainly isn't always good for the human buying the thing, especially when the idea of it is being shoved down your throat through constant advertisements.

Instagram's Ad Revenue saw a 16% rise in 2024 compared to 2023, reaching $62.1 billion. [https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/instagram-ad-revenue] The platform sees the highest usage among people aged 18 to 34. It is the ideal platform if your targets are young adults and millennials. [https://www.statista.com/statistics/325587/instagram-global-age-group/][https://datareportal.com/essential-instagram-stats] So why do people buy things more off of social media ads as compared to conventional advertising on billboards, flyers, the newspaper, and tv? The answer comes in two words - algorithm, and influencers. Sites such as Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, etc use advanced algorithms to analyze user data and preferences. Hence, each ad that shows up on your feed is highly personalized. Advertisements on social media use the users' search history, demographic information, and past purchases, making sure to almost always get what someone wants to buy right.

An influencer is defined as a person or thing that influences another. In the context of social media, it means two things, one social media itself, and a person/organization who uses the platform to influence other users of the same platform. Being an influencer on Instagram has two sides. One, the monetary benefits, or the lack thereof, and two, the emotional and mental side. Influencers who post things very often, and become popular, get sponsors and inadvertently become brand ambassadors. They are paid by that brand to talk about it and post about it. Then, it doesn't matter if the person posting about something uses it or not; it's just that they are selling it. On the flip side, even popular Instagram influencers don't always get brand offers, so earning money through posting is difficult. And how does one become popular? By the number of views, the number of likes, the number of times the share button is clicked, and the number of comments under it. More is good, right? Well, as it turns out, there is a dark side to this. People who post, many times start having only one thing on their mind. And you guessed it right, it is "How many people have seen what I posted?" This leads them to overthink about each and everything that they do. On top of that, reading comments under their post leads to both positivity and negativity. But let's face it, in today's world, hate spreads faster than love. So it is not far-fetched to say that the negative comments' influence affects the mental and emotional state of the person posting.

All of this is how Instagram affects the people who used it to influence. Now, let's talk about what we originally started off with. Instagram influences our thought processes and tastes a lot more than we think it does. Everyone runs about like sheep, following and trying what the newest trend is. Someone who has never liked a band before would start listening to their songs because they became popular on Instagram. Someone starts reading a whole new genre of books only because someone else has said that it is very good. Everyone suddenly starts hating a book series or criticizing it, and oh one shouldn't dare to contradict the opinion of the larger public. What to eat, what to watch, what to play, what to do, what to read, how to sleep, how to study, how to eat, whom to talk to, whom not to talk to, who is what kind of person, what music to listen to, what news to know, what news to ignore, everything of a users life is moderated by the platform. And in the end, Instagram runs on advertisements. So what you are spending your time watching, is only a form of advertising and  what you are doing in your life, is only the result of trying to attain a mirage. And people end up buying things from what is shown on the platform. Beyond material consumerism, Instagram also enforces ideological consumerism. It reinforces our beliefs about something and makes us think that we are right in thinking what we think. That there is someone out there who is exactly like us, when in reality that is not the case. It makes us believe that the thoughts we have, and the things we do, are our own, we do them because we want to, while in truth, they have been forced upon us in such a way that we believe that it is we who feel these things.

The worst thing about this whole scenario is, that we lose. We lose energy and we lose time. Time that can be spent doing something productive, time that can be spent learning something new, time that can be spent expanding our horizons, time that can be spent maintaining an interpersonal relationship, time that can be spent thinking and doing something for the society, time that can be spent in being kind, to others, to ourselves. We lose time, and we lose our life. I personally have lost months to it. Months of my precious time, and mental space, thinking about things that needn't be thought about. Feeling like if I only had that one thing, I would be happy. Feeling like something in my life was wrong just because I didn't possess that one particular object or didn't feel this particular way about something. This is what overconsumption of social media content does to you. It takes over your life. It gets you hooked to cheap dope shots with every scroll, that leave you drained and wanting when you aren't looking at a screen.

The saddest part is that almost nothing that people post about on Instagram is real. It is very rare to come across something truly original and not just over-processed reproduced junk. So why must we let something that is not real, and only interested in our money and time, affect us so much? Why must we let it question our way of living? Why must we let it define what happiness is? Ask yourself these questions. Reflecting on my journey, I now understand the impact of excessive social media use. I no longer allow Instagram to shape my self-worth or dictate how I spend my time. My advice to others is simple: Question what you see. Learn to form your own opinions. And for Earth's sake go touch some grass.