Notes

Materialism in American society
Modern society has been heavily cultivated by the stature gained through the possessions of materialistic items. With no self-regard of financial reasons nor practical reasons, many seem to indulge themselves in items that would show personal success in the eyes of others. That success is shown in expensive luxury and brand name items that are unnecessarily priced highly. Many seem to tend to their superego and ego by illogically spending thousands on brand name material for social status and for personal satisfaction. This social status is frequently flaunted on social media; often with the visual representation of happiness from a luxurious life, while accompanied by an ostentatious display of wealth of materialistic items. This trend of acceptance from others, across platforms of social media, is ultimately getting worse with each coming generation; often putting social pressure on kids and teens to become more popular. This frequently inputs ideals into younger kids that it is necessary to spend more money to have a better personal outlook on life and attain more friends. In this essay I will critique the American culture of materialism. The main points that will be argued throughout the essay are how materialistic choices are rooted from exposure at a young age by marketers and how those choices affect one's well-being. Furthermore, I will also be explaining how social media is associated with self-acceptance and how social status intertwines with debt. These are all principles that are factored in the daily lives of many due to the social inquiry of acquiring
materialistic items. This idealization is often demonstrated throughout the United States and its population from a variety of ethnic and age groups with no inclination of stopping anytime soon.
In our current American society, we have fallen into play of big corporate company ideals and it is as if we have been in an assembly line without our consent. We’ve become morphed into consumers that are led to follow ideals installed from corporate companies. In our everyday lives, we have been exposed to materialism from marketers and it has become something that we, as a country, have fallen prey to. Corporates have determined that to create a society that follows their ideals and buys what they put out, they need to start marketing as early as possible. Marketers have become more attentive to our youth and ascertained that it was best to employ advertisements and materialistic items that would get the attention of our young generation. This strategic way of marketing is best because it appeals to the wants of our youth. They learn early on that materialistic items brings joy to them and it heavily influences their later choices. The satisfaction from the gain of materialistic items becomes like a drug, the need for the satisfaction only grows with the increase in consumption.
Since our society is so heavily indulged in materialism, there are many platforms of advertisement that is used to target our youth. One of the most common forms of advertising is found within our own homes, our televisions. Commercials became more relevant with the widespread adoption of the television, and quickly found a way to impact the lives of our younger generation. Since commercials were appealing to kids and the use of media and technology was exponentially more common with time, advertisers found it to be a wise idea to invest in ads that cater to kids’ likings. To be more exact, funding those advertisements that gravitate to the likings of our younger generation is not cheap, rather the opposite; “advertisers spend more than $12 billion per year to reach the youth market and [..] children view more than 40,000 commercials each year” (APA). It has been proven that this link of advertisements is tied with the recollection of items from those ads, and with repetition of that ad, the preference for that item grows stronger. That strong preference in a certain product affect the “children’s product purchase request and that these requests do influence parents' purchasing decisions” (APA). This is distinctive proof that there is a correlation with targeted marketing and the purchase of those items that are heavily enforced through advertisements. We, as an American society, have become so endowed in this form of advertising that it has become a commonality in our daily lives. Without our notice, we have been tainted by marketing and influenced by it since our upbringings. It has also become a part of our American culture, one that is needed on an economic basis but not needed on the ability of it causing harm to our youths cognitive development.
A prominent example of targeted marketing that is frequently bestowed upon our society is fast food marketing. The fast food industry targets our kids and teens. They put out advertisements that give the false pretense of happiness when you buy their food, thus incentivizing young kids that are easily gullible to buy from them. Our younger generation is subjected to ads that promotes unhealthy eating habits because of the materialistic items they offer. Fast food companies offer toys in kid’s meals that generally appeals to the young ones and entices them to buy those type of meals more frequently, such as a happy meal offered by McDonald’s that includes a toy that typically promotes a movie or tv show. These collaborations are generally common within the fast food industry. The food industry spends a lot of money trying to appeal to the younger generation, spending around “$4.6 billion to advertise mostly unhealthy products”, while the target audience was primarily children and teens (Yale). With more advertisements that promotes unhealthy eating habits, it affects those who fall to companies ideals and buy unhealthy food for materialistic items; generally, it is younger kids that are affected. For companies, it is better to target the younger ones because it can influence their later eating habits and lifestyles when growing up. When you target the younger generation, it creates an avenue that can later be fulfilled by them when older due to the influences that were presented to them at a younger age. Our American society has been tainted by ads that are subjected to target specific demographics and it has been something we all have been immersed into since our birth. The influence by big corporate has become indelible in our minds; causing more damage than we could have ever imagined.
On a psychological level, materialism has affected American society more than we have previously thought. Due to the amount materialistic ideals we have been subject to, often fueled with one’s own quest of wealth and possessions, it impacts our own subjective well-being. There is a notion of happiness that is portrayed by many that have wealth and materialistic items, but in reality, it is the exact opposite. In many studies, it has been shown that “high materialistic consumers experience more negative feelings and are less satisfied with life”, proving that the notion that one will attain more happiness from a gain of materialistic wealth is false (Hudders and Pandelaere 412). Materialist use goods that they buy, to not only to signal their status but to also to conform to social norms. They strip themselves from their own individuality, often engulfing their life in materialistic items, such as clothes or a sense of fashion to signal to others that they want to be noticed and acknowledged. Unfortunately, many materialists let this mind set stick to them and eventually they “value their possessions even more than interpersonal relationships” (Hudders and Pandelaere 413). This frequently leads to isolation as a result of their values shifting from people to items. This panders to current society since we have no specific demographic that pertains to the requirements of a materialistic identity. Our symbol of our identity differs from each age group: kids tend to idealize toys, teens seem to value their shoes over another person's life, and adults are fixated on having a new car with a perfect house. We, as a society, have been corroded by our own set place value of our items, and we place those items over most priorities of our daily lives. We often are dictated by what we wear and what brand name it is but if it has no brand name, we are shunned and harassed by others. This is because either we could not afford the new items that are in fashion, or we choose to stray away from the group norms. We inevitably affect the mental fortitude of our youth because they are forced to fall into a trend that will later shape how they think and value materialistic items.
Is there a difference in well-being for those with luxurious materialistic items and those without? Quite frankly no, those who own luxuries are no happier than those without. The opposite of happiness, envy is displayed by those with luxuries. Several economists believe “that luxury is eroding a societies’ strength” due to the never-ending struggle of obtaining wealth and a status that demonstrated through material that is wearable (Hudders and Pandelaere 415). This sense of high-end fashion brings envy upon many, even if it is meant to display one’s success, many tend to think of it as antagonizing and perceive it as negative because of the ostentatious display of wealth. There are cases in which luxury items do affect our well-being. It has been proven that, in some cases, “luxury products offer an excellent quality to the consumer and deliver pleasure and sensory gratification to the self” (Hudders and Pandelaere 416). A prominent example would be, drinking expensive wine and comparing it to cheap wine. We have a bias in that expensive equates to better quality and lower cost equates to cheaper quality. We have a higher sense of pleasure when surrounded by high-end materialistic items, but this impression only benefits our affective well-being- defined as the frequency and intensity of positive and negative emotions and mood.
Social media has become very prevalent in our daily lives, for both children and adults. We go on social media to check up on our friends and family, but this is not the main reason, rather it is more of an egotistical one. We go on and we see people flaunting their wealth, their brand name items, their house, their new car, or whatever it is they find value in, and we compare ourselves to them. In our response, we put out images of our ourselves and show we have items of value in our possession; from shoes to bags, to designer clothing that equals to the value of a car. We are always in pursuit of status that is acknowledged by others. We want this because it makes us feel important in a way, and it has become a way of life for many Americans. In a cognitive aspect, people with high end materialistic items demonstrate that “they are better off than their peers”, which could result in more confident evaluation of themselves (Hudders and Pandelaere 416). When you go out and flaunt on social media, displaying your wealth for the public to see, you undoubtedly judge those with less and in a sense, you feel happier when comparing yourself to them. This display of wealth puts those with less in more pressure to conform with the rest of society by going out and buying unnecessary items that they possibly cannot afford. This affects a large majority of people, I myself was one of those that was socially pressured to buy expensive items when I was a kid, knowing well enough that it was not affordable for my parents, I still asked. I asked because I wanted to fit in and I promised I would not ask again but surely, I did. It is something that engulfs our kids today, they are mentally attached to those brand name items for the friendships that are tagged along with it, and the acknowledgement you receive because you are able to wear something with value and while also gaining a sense of self-fulfillment you feel from those materialistic items. It has cultivated all of us and we are still falling for those brand name items. As a society, we need to stop this stigma created by social media that we need materialistic items for self-satisfaction. We need a place that promotes happiness without judging one's possessions, but unfortunately that currently seems only possible in a perfect world.
Status that is gained from possessions is not cheaply attained. When we go out and buy new items to gain a higher social status, we spend more money than we initially thought. This problem is more related with adults because teens care less about the materialistic value, rather they care about the status gained from them. Adults tend to be the ones that do the spending for themselves and possibly for their own kids. Research has also determined materialism to be “associated with higher debt among working adults” because they are the ones with the household income and the ability to spend money, unlike teens and kids (Brown et al. 2278). With that ability, they are more inclined to spend it on materialistic items that would be satisfactory to them, especially on the social status aspect. We often associate social status with the number of materialistic items within our possession, so for us, spending behavior is correlated with our social status. The spending behavior often dictates what kind of financial situation people find themselves in. High materialistic people tend to spend more on services and goods and spend it at a more frequent rate than those with low materialistic habits. In recent studies, it has been shown that high materialistic people “reported ownership of more possessions, made more discretionary purchases, and spent more money on necessity goods and services” while they on average reported the same amount of income as those with less materialistic habits (Brown et al. 2288). The spending behavior is dramatically more frequent for those with high materialistic mindsets, but this often leaves those with debt from a deficit due to irregular spending and compulsive buying. But in return, they gain self fulfilment from the status gained with more possessions in their name. Within our American culture, we see this often from a variety of people, from normal people to celebrities. They spend money on items to gain acknowledgement from people all over, even if they do not have the money, they pull out credit cards to afford these superfluous items.
To conclude, our American society has been engrossed by materialistic items. Possessions regularly flaunted on social media for the gain of social status, often with no regard of the cost of this type of lifestyle. The social inquiry of attaining this lifestyle has been shoved down our throats since we were kids from television ads to social medias ads that we see everyday. All of these have had its own influence on our mindset and made our lives revolve around materialistic items. I find it demeaning in a sense that we all have some sort of materialistic mindset because I want our lives to have more meaning than just a piece of clothing or a simple automobile. Those type of materialistic items many buy for acceptance are replaceable, but not a human life. We worry too much about what others think about us, but a lot of the time it drives many into a craze for new items that would define who they are. I personally think we should define ourselves not by what we wear, but rather how we live.





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