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Consumerism and its effect on society
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An Affected America Due to Consumerism
How many of us really think about “Why we consume the way we do?” and “How do we constantly support the economic process of consumerism?” Some people might say that they need the all of the flashy electronic gadgets like phones, tablets, and hover boards or they must have those 3,000 designer jeans because they’re trending right now on social media. I asked myself these questions and I realized that I’d never really consciously thought about how Americans consume until now.
The neediness and demand for more has rapidly grown since the birth of America and Americans have been supporting consumerism for decades. But we must ask the big question to ourselves “Are we truly gaining anything from our unhealthy habits in the way we consume?” It is without question that consumerism has indeed affected and greatly impacted our American culture, lifestyle, and social statuses in America by our desire to want more. James A. Roberts the author of “The Treadmill of Consumption expressed that, “Cars for example, are
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an expensive but easy way to tell the world that you’ve made it; there’s no mistaking which are the most expensive. The problem is that nearly everyone else is upgrading to the latest model as well, so no real increase in status occurs – another example of the treadmill of consumption.” (Roberts 126). In addition in the next paragraph he argues that, “Status consumers are willing to pay perceive to convey status and prestige.” (Roberts 126). Consumerism in America is only growing faster and quicker in the 21st century. People are so desirable and desperate for the products that manufacturers across America are constantly producing, and the want and demands for more goods aren’t altering anytime soon. If you have ever watched the heart-felt Disney movie Wall-E it depicts the life-story of a service robot whose sole purpose and responsibility is cleaning up the aftermath of planet Earth due to the over population and pollution that mass consumerism caused. In the beginning of the movie you see Wall-E and his best friend a cockroach the only two interactive things left on the planet surrounded by all the material things, waste, and products forgotten by the humans who have all moved on a global cruise ship navigating and orbiting through space sponsored by the Big & Large Company. The Big & Large Company caught the attention of all the humans by advertising and introducing them into the ideas of scaling and upsizing on goods. They continued to buy excessively due to their participation in consumerism. However, their bad habits ended up leading their world on Earth into destruction thanks to the mass production of these goods that polluted their environments overtime. . In the essay “A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World” Julia B. Corbett states that, “Advertising idealizes the natural world and presents a simplified, distorted picture of nature as subline, simple, and unproblematic.” (Corbett 237). I believe Corbett’s statement strongly relates to how in the beginning the Big & Large Company did not expect their excessive advertisement of products and goods and mass consumerism would have ended up being problematic in their global environment. I have had to have seen this movie about a million times never focusing on the message it was sending to us about consumerism. I question if, in the future are we going to be in the same predicament in America that the humans in Wall-E were in? What’s going to happen to us if all the stuff we continue to consume takes up all our space here in our country? Where will we go, what will we do, and how will we survive? In the rate we are going due to our participation consumerisms we need to start thinking and acknowledging this. It’s all fun and games until something drastic changes our circumstances. Furthermore, the media and popular culture greatly influences the way we consume in America. We spend generous amounts of money on what we see trending in the media whether its trough a TV screen, social media app, magazines, or on the billboards we pass on the freeways daily. It’s quite simple now of days if we see our favorite artists, politicians, and movie stars wearing it we are going to desire to have the same things they posses because we live in a time period where majority of us are trying to imitate the lives of the celebrities we support and follow. Roberts specifies that, “Status consumers are willing to pay premium prices for products that are perceived to convey status and prestige.” (Roberts 126) What he means by this is that we tend to be infatuated with the lifestyles of these renowned individuals. To me living in America is all about being known for something that is labeled miraculously and how much money can one individual attain in their life span. Roberts also implies that, “Today status is conveyed more often through ownership of status products than through personal, occupational, or family reputation.”(Roberts 127). We are in constant competition with our narcissist mindsets and the way we compete is greatly determined by how much more you have than the next person. In the essay “A Faint Green Sell: Advertising and the Natural World” Julia B. Corbett explains how advertisements of goods affect our human pleasures and influence us to have a narcissistic approach to things. She implies that, “A narcissist is most concerned with pleasing himself or herself at the expense of others. Ads that show people “conquering” natural elements are expressing me-first anthropocentrism.” (Corbett, p. 244). Corbett was explaining how we as individuals have these me-first attitudes towards the good we buy. The perfect example of this is the popular holiday that many of us Americans participates in every year the day after Thanksgiving, is the infamous Black Friday.
Americans that support Black Friday have this me-first attitude unconsciously portraying a narcissist mindset towards bargains and sells. They go into stores lined up for days willing to compete for the greater sale amongst thousands of other costumers and retailers that support this chaos annually because they gain the majority of their profits during the holiday season. Anne Norton states in her essay “The Signs of Shopping” that, “Shoppers who look, as most shoppers do, for bargains, and salespeople who warn shoppers of impending sales, see choices between commodities as something other than the evidence and the exercise of freedom. They see covert direction and exploitation; they see the withholding of information and the manipulation of knowledge.” (Norton
89). To conclude, consumerism in America is at its peak in my opinion and Americans remain unconscious to the issues that mass consumerism will cause us one day. We are heavily influenced by the media and advisements we see daily and most retailers and manufactures only care about making a profit off of us Americans the more we buy the more they gain profits and produce more. It is a never ending cycle when it comes to consumerism in America and we support this daily whether we walk-in stores or shop online. It is without question that we need to monitor consumerism America.
It is seen in everything from the hoarding of material objects to the destruction of friendships, both of which are popular themes when regarding the topic of Black Friday shopping. Black Friday has become Black Thursday, a trend which has only shown up within the last decade. The great American holiday that is Thanksgiving is celebrated because of our gratefulness toward all that we have, a holiday that is meant to be spent gathered around a table of our loved ones. However, the retail holiday that consumes the day afterward has begun to overflow into our gatherings, and it is due to the greed of the American people. Were it not for the market’s demand for earlier sales, stores would not open their sales on Thursday nights. Everyone would simply wait until early the next morning to start off on their shopping extravaganzas, and the sales themselves would likely be far less violent as
There are many people who are driven by consumerism, and many people who wish they could get in touch with that type of world. Consumers are often encouraged to advertise more of the products that they are buying to get more people to buy more products. Hari Kunzru, author of “Raj, Bohemian,” creates a narrator who is obsessed with maintaining his individuality and free will in a world that is overcome with consumerism. Believes that the world takes away individuality when consumerism comes into play and how hard it is to maintain their true self. In her LA Times article “Teen Haulers Create a Fashion Force,” Andrea Chang writes about the phenomenon of teenage YouTube users who make videos that publicize their latest shopping binges.
Thanksgiving Day is a day of family, food, and giving thanks for the blessings in life and yet some people believe Thanksgiving to be a prep day for Black Friday, the biggest shopping day of the year. The focus of Thanksgiving shifted from family bonding to incessant shopping. This trend of taking away from the hours of Thanksgiving in order to shop is enraging. It steals away from family time for the shoppers and the employees. Employers threaten workers that if they do not work on that certain holiday, they will be fired. Black Friday should be kept to Friday instead of moving in on my family time. The whole culture of Black Friday has become repugnant and unnecessary.
Through out the world, thousand of starving people look wherever they can for scraps of food or spare change. On the other hand, millionaires and billionaires can buy a private jet to fly anywhere on a whim while eating the finest of foods. In the middle, ordinary people work regular twelve-hour days in order to pay the bills and put food on the table. Each person can be in a different category. Most often you can tell which category an individual is in by looking at the things they own. Consumerism, or the push to buy goods and services, is not a new thing. It has been around since the very first sale or trade centuries ago. Although today, controversy has arisen about the rapidly growing rate of consumerism and how it affects the economy around the world. Is the current rate of consumerism a good or bad effect on the economy? Also, what are some ways to help people understand consumerism better? As I do research and explore, I hope to find the answers to these questions in order to understand the issue better myself.
As a ritual, Black Friday indicates that shoppers value four sacred objects; materialism, Christmas, relational bonding, and tradition (Bell 235). Materialism in this context is searching “good deals.” By participating in the largest shopping event of the year (figure 1), shoppers are valuing the importance of getting a good discount (Bell 243). Christmas is a sacred object because consumers value the concept of gift-giving, as many Black Friday shoppers are shopping for holiday gifts (Bell 244). Relational bonding is described as the time spent shopping with other fellow shoppers, including family, friends, and strangers (Bell 243). Black Friday shopper will typically shop in groups rather than alone. And finally by participating in Black Friday, consumers are valuing tradition (Bell 244). As research has shown, many shoppers attend to simply follow the annual tradition, rather than have a specific
America’s current standard of living is going to cause our demise. Consumerism is a problem throughout Americans culture since mass production began in the late nineteenth century. The obsession with consumerism has led to mindless wastes of resources, a diseased society and economic instability. Rick Wolff, a professor of economics at University of Massachusetts, states “economics of capitalism spread consumerism—now uncontrolled, ecologically harmful, and fiscally disastrous—throughout the United States”. Wolff’s viewpoint on consumerism aligns with mine. Believing that an economy based on promoting endless consumption is volatile and unsustainable. Consumerism can be analyzed and seen to be embedded by corporations and politicians.
‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley is a science-fiction book in which people live in a futuristic society and a place called the World State. In ‘Brave New World’, Aldous Huxley used the idea of consumerism to describe the behaviors and lives of the citizens of the World State. The practice of consumerism by the people of the World State fulfilled their satisfactory and happiness. However, it also blinded purity and truth among its people. Different classes and different genders of people practiced different acts of consumerism such as consuming soma, technology and bodies. They sought happiness from them and eventually these acts became a social norm. However, these practices of consumerism also had side effects. It blinded truth such as
The massive amount of consumerism and materalistic ideology came from the decade of the 1980s and proved to be the time of wanting to have luxrious items throughout the daily routine of being an American citizen. The American culture of massive consumerism of the 1980s was influenced by the elements of the American Dream, the iconic pop stars and events, the deep recession troubling the lives of many, and the nationalistic pride that was shown through the actions of recreations and sports. Not only was the 1980s influenced by the culture of consumerism, but it impacted the future generations to only want to become a bigger and better version of the 1980s.
Modern technology has provided us with numerous time-saving devices such as automobiles, cellphones, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers. In North American the middle class and upper classes are larger than ever before, most of them taking for granted things that were once considered luxuries, such as colored televisions and air conditioning. People spend vast amounts of money on expensive things that at one point either did not exist or were well beyond our necessity. Americas past time has changed from baseball to an uncontrollable shopping driven culture. In recent decades the range of life choices available to people ...
Would any self-respecting American shopper pass the opportunity to accumulate great items at extremely reduced prices? Of course not! The idea that there are people all around the country who are bold enough to criticize savvy shoppers just for trying to take advantage of great sales is awful. Huge sale events such as Black Friday receive relentless criticism year to year, but for no true reason. Targeted by people who are incapable of worrying about only themselves during the holiday season.
Consumerism is the drive shaft of our generation, the fuel that pushes kids through college, and hope that one day we can have all the things seen in magazines and on TV. The dream of owning a house in the suburbs with a white picket fence and a SUV parked in the driveway. “Advertising h...
Consumerism in the 21st century is what has shaped our economy for centuries. Throughout our history, the American dream has been to become the most successful person you can possibly become given the opportunities presented to you. Consumerism has provided our country with a lot of jobs and efficient sources of income for the general population. Consumerism gives our country an upside unlike many other countries in that you can grow up in a hardworking blue collar family and become the most successful person in America. Even though consumerism has a lot of positive effects, it also could be the reason for a lot of society’s issues that people have to live through day in and day out.
For most, Thanksgiving is a holiday spent with family and delicious food, but for others, it is a day consisting of tremendous planning in hopes for a major haul of “discounted” items. In the United States, it is safe to say that Black Friday is one of the biggest shopping events each year. In recent years the public's participation in Black Friday has continued to decline, stated by the National Retail Federation. ”Thirty-five percent of consumers who plan to shop during Thanksgiving week say they will do so on Black Friday, down from 51 percent last year and 59 percent the year before, according to consumer markets research from PwC, the professional services giant.” (Bhattarai). I personally have never been
Jessi Arrington’s speech was titled Wearing Nothing New. Diana Kendall, a professor at Baylor University, wrote her article, “The Realities of Hedonistic Consumerism”. “Effects of Consumerism” is another article by Anup Shah. The
Consumerism and Consumption are intertwined in their definition but also difficult to differentiate. 'Consumption' is the purchase and use of manufactured goods. But in the last years consumption has become "both an economic and a cultural touchstone" (Miles 3). Consumption has become more and more part of our life in today's society. We consume many kinds of products and often replace bought items if they stop working instead of repairing them.