Consumerism & You
Story by Rachel Retchless | Design & Illustration by Kayla Craig
You went online to your favorite store and end- ed up buying a few things that really caught your eye, even though maybe you didn’t need them. But it’s fine because they were on sale, you wanted something fresh and after all, shopping helps you relax ... Or does it?
Buying new stuff can be fun, but it might be taking more of a toll than you think.
Over-buying and consuming may be affecting your mental health and invading your peace of mind.
Consumerism. It’s a word you may have heard, but unless you’ve taken a business class or done your own research, you may not know exactly what consumerism means — other than it’s related to consuming stuff.
According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, consumerism is “the theory that an increasing consumption of goods is economically desirable.”
Consuming more and more may be what keeps the economy booming, but licensed Psychologist Paul Reppas points out, “There is some indication that there’s positive benefits to materialistic drive or an industrialistic mindset ... like economic activity, but for the most part, all the effects of consumerism culture on the individual psyche ... are negative.”
Reppas also says the idea of consumerism is feeding a certain story within society and individual lives. “The story that our culture often communicates is that ‘you don’t have enough. You don’t have what you need. You should be dissatisfied with who you are.’”
New-Age Marketing
The thoughts of not being enough that consumerism puts into your brain may cause you to blame yourself or other buyers. Before you start feeling guilty about your last impulse buy, you may want to know about the marketing industry’s role in consumerism culture.
Even though it may be impossible to never see an ad again, especially if you can’t sleep without your nightly Hulu binge, you may be able to lessen the invasiveness of ads. Have you ever seen notifications pop up on a website asking you to allow ‘cookies’? These little tools aren’t nearly as sweet as their name makes them seem.
Associate Professor of Marketing, Sayantani Mukherjee, says that cookies are small amounts of data that sites store on the hard drives of users. They’re used to track your activity on sites and when you visit them.
They also explain the spooky reappearance of an ad for those shoes you checked out earlier in the day on a completely different site than the one the ad appears on, Mukherjee explains.
The website for Norton Antivirus Software says cookies also function to save your shopping cart or remember passwords if you choose. But if you’re worried about your data privacy or you’re just tired of being enticed by personalized ads, Mukherjee suggests periodically clearing the cookies from your web browser.
Mukherjee points out that not all newer marketing tactics are as creepy as cookies.
Think about your favorite brand. Do they have a vibrant social media personality, great customer service or authentic, user-generated content? Mukherjee says that these are modern marketing tactics that may feel less invasive than cookies.
Junior Psychology and Public Relations major Jaidyn Alemazkour points out another modern marketing method — influencers. Alemazkour recently tried a hair care brand suggested by social media influencer Andrea Russett, after she discussed on her YouTube channel how it was working wonders for her hair.
Although sometimes influencers discuss brands because they’re sponsored by them, Alemazkour says, “I was like ‘yes’, because you know [brands] pay certain people to go on their advertisements and say ‘hey look at this.’ But hers wasn’t even a paid video. Hers wasn’t sponsored, so I took it as more credible.”
While there are many ways specific products are targeted toward the consumer, it can be important to recognize the impact of this constant array of products at your fingertips.
Mental Health Impact
The consumerism narrative may be causing some serious mental health problems.
The marketing industry is dehumanizing and depersonalizing people, according to Reppas. “That’s the best way you can market to someone — to convince them that they are representative of something and then tell them that you need these accessories to represent that thing.”
The consumerism narrative also intends to separate people depending on status. This is in place of a society narrative that says, “‘We’re all together in this, we’re all working together, we’re all finding solutions together,’” says Reppas.
There are many implications of dehumanizing and isolating people. Reppas says people are being less vulnerable with each other, struggling to find intimacy and feeling alone. He says that a lack of human connection, “from a biological perspective, literally means death. There’s no difference between social connection and death to an intensely social species like humans.”
Because of this idea, it is easy to see why a lack of human connection through the consumerism culture can impact people’s mental health.
You may know that your last online shopping binge is taking a serious toll on your bursting closet, but did you know your purchases are using up mental space too?
“We are a tool-utilizing species ... but part of tool use is identifying with these things ... these things become parts of our psyche because they’re extensions of our physical body,” Reppas says.
He adds, “I think it causes us to be overloaded not just in a physical sense, not just the dissatisfaction that comes with that, a cluttered space ... but also just mentally, which is so much more critical, because our brain is helping us see the world and determine what behaviors we should engage in and then we’re cluttering it with junk.”
Not enough time has passed for human genetic and neurological structures to be able to distinguish wants from needs; it’s all just resources according to Reppas.
Taking Back Control
Consumerism may come with some negative and invasive side effects. But there are some simple lifestyle changes you can make to start living a more fulfilling and less consumption-driven life.
Reppas encourages people to engage with others and adds that “buying stuff generally doesn’t make us any more happy, buying experiences tends to actually make us more happy.”
Adding gratitude into your life can also provide some perspective on consumerism habits. Reppas encourages taking the time to stop and appreciate what you have at that moment before you move on to the next thing by asking yourself questions like ‘Can I be thankful for what’s here?’ and if you happen to be splurging, ‘Can I be mindful and aware and appreciate the thing that I’m overspending for?’
If you’ve ever spent more money than your bank account allows so that you could have the next best product, you may understand what a financial burden this can cause — especially if you’re a student.
Steele Campbell, Personal Finance Planning assistant professor, has some tips that may help you to get your spending under control and think more about the future.
Budgeting may be your first step in the right direction. “If I were a student, I would make it a quarterly budget instead of a monthly budget because that is the time period most important to me as a student,” says Campbell.
This process can be as easy as downloading free budgeting apps or creating an Excel spreadsheet to track your spending.
Another suggestion of Campbell’s is to take your student loans seriously. “Student loans are no joke,” says Campbell, “The best advice I can give is to be an informed borrower ... For every dollar I borrow while in school, I will be forced to spend a little more than a dollar to pay back that debt in the future.”
If you’ve been feeling the pressure to consume more and more, want to spend less money or just want to see less individualized ads, consider trying some of these techniques to take control of your consumption and spending.
Reppas says that what people spend money on represents what they want to see in the world. What do you want to see in the world?
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