Materialism And Social Media

What is Materialism?

Seeing our life around, it wouldn’t be much difficult to define materialism. from our birth till old age materialism is what we all are running or you can say forced to run for by our own society.

Materialism is all about seeking happiness and peace in something which is not true. Something which at the end gives you suffering and an urge to suffer more by desiring the same.

In simple term, being materialistic means to give unnecessary values to the things which do not deserve to be given such importance. we ought to find happiness and have created endless desires believing that it would really give us what we are looking for.

It traps us in a never-ending circle of unrest ness making us to suffer more. it would be right to call it as a rattrap in which once trapped, we make our life miserable. we have really forgotten what actual peace is, which resides in our own inner-self.

Reason for widespread materialism

Now, the question may arise for the reason for such state of the society. Well, there would be many answers to this. However, speaking particularly about social media, it is a mass spreader of materialism. From our own indulgence in internet to our television, we are being influenced by profit makers to run for more and unnecessary consumption.

They create advertisement, showing their products appealing and desirable. As if getting them will really change our life. from referring a metal ring as a ‘love band’ to calling a vehicle ‘a family car’, we are being forced to believe in in all this.

Talking about social media, it has now become a platform for showing off your life style. how well you consume will now judge your success and wellbeing. Everybody’s daily life is heavily engulfed with advertising. Be it our own online platforms or the posters and billboards we see every time around. Advertisers tend to hide the manipulative side of the message. This is because if viewers noticed the manipulation, they would be less likely to accept it.

All those advertisements in our television are full of influencing contents. the makers spend ample amount of time for deciding the songs to be used in background, tag line to be used or which celebrity will be more suitable for a particular product. All such things are decided in the view of earning more by forcing the viewers to consume their products

Effect of Materialism

A number of studies have been undertaken to understand the health and happiness behind these people’s lives and the materialism they are displaying. The messages that users are presenting indicate that they are living a happy and glamorous life however, this can be far from the truth. Various reports have been published indicating the negative influence of endorsing material value to physical and mental health.

materialism has also led to excessive consumption which has hampered our environment due to contemplating rise in demand and production of goods and service. Which is a major reason for rise in pollution level.

Small children are shown eating meat showing us how consuming it would make us feel happy despite hiding the real cruelty and pain of animals behind their so called ‘happiness’. Advertisement related to baby products even use quotes like one who loves their children will surely buy our product which very often have negative impact on a poor person or a mother who cannot afford such things.

Kids are even shown enjoying eating chips and biscuits which targets the viewers of younger age group to indulge them in consuming the same despite having its adverse effect on their health. pop-ups of companies such as Swiggy or dominoes are shown on our cell phone many times a day.

Social Media And Materialism

If you host a social media page, you would understand how easy it is to find someone that you may or may not know who religiously shows off items that they own often hash tagging the brand from which they are from.

Many of these people are often portraying a completely different personality to the person that they are in real life. These users even include famous people of the world. If you follow celebrities online, you will be sure to have many photos of them endorsing products pop up in your news feed.

If social media continues to be a part of people’s everyday to-do- list, people’s views will continue to have a materialistic priority which is not always good for the heart deep-down. It will continue being a case of users thinking that our material status will raise our self-esteem, which in fact it reduces it.

From the society’s point of view , people’s worth are not judged by their wisdom, knowledge or kindness but by their possessions. You may now know the reason why children start dreaming for a car or a ‘big house’ at an early age.

We judge our self-worth based on what things we possess, and since there will always be someone with something we want or someone that we see as “better” based on their possessions, we often experience an eternal dissatisfaction with ourselves.

In our modern society, we turn to quantity instead of quality to measure worth of ourselves and others.

A perfect example of this is social media.

Conclusion

People have now discarded seeing moral values as their possessions, they now live a life of inner dissatisfaction and aim for material success only. we all dream about possessing this and that and have endless never-ending desires. A person should be judged on his intellect and basic moral dignities and values that he holds towards life.

Take the example of very own Siddhartha Gautama to whom we refer to as buddha, he had thousand times of what we possess. Still, he saw something which has worth more than his palace and wealthy life. He saw something beyond physical and materialistic and attained a state of rest and tranquillity by discarding all worldly desires rather than being attracted to them.

At the end, I would say that despite having such negative influence of particularly media on our today’s life we must live wisely rather than compulsion of our desires and must give value to our inner self and peace of our mind as ultimately, we are the one who does experience the world in our own self.