Social media supports mindless spending

BY CINTHIA MAPULA

Student Reporter

How many times have you seen something on social media and suddenly feel the desire to want it? 

It could be a drink, a pair of shoes, a luxury bag, a fancy new car or even how someone else looks. Prior to seeing this on social media you didn’t seem to mind not having it. 

You might have been completely content with your current lifestyle until you saw someone else’s. It’s happened to all of us at some point while checking our social media.

When Instagram was created in 2010, the platform’s idea was to feature photographs, specifically those taken on mobile devices. Now in 2023 it has become a marketing tool. Instagram has more than 200 million business accounts and over 500,000 active influencers promoting a product to sell you. Influencers advertise their ‘lifestyle’ in hopes to make a sale from you. 

The irony is that they can afford that luxury lifestyle by getting us to buy their products. We are literally handing over our money to them. It’s a transaction, a transfer of money from our hands to theirs. We are feeding the monster ourselves and, in the process, becoming more and more insecure because we keep comparing ourselves to each other. It’s an ongoing cycle.

Theodore Roosevelt once said “Comparison is the thief of joy”. He was right. Don’t compare yourself to what’s not real. 

Morphing yourselves to look like the social media standards is robbing yourself of your gifts and uniqueness. Trends come and go, what is popular now will trend out eventually. We don’t need more clones, a copy and paste version of social media beauty standards everywhere we look.

We need to embrace individuality, make better choices with our money, inspire new creativity and find our purpose. Stop trying to imitate someone else’s path, find and follow your own instead. You were created with a purpose and gift inside of you, share that gift, the world needs it.

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