You’re scrolling through TikTok one random afternoon, and before long, you’re being bombarded with one video after another: an influencer trying a Dubai chocolate bar, another flaunting their brand new Stanley water bottle, and yet another showcasing their huge Labubu collection. What started as a source of casual entertainment quickly turned into a nonstop stream of things you deeply crave, despite not knowing what they were just five minutes before. In today’s society, excessive consumption has become the new normal.
Excessive consumption has a long history. In the years following World War II, consumption rates dramatically increased as the world saw a shift from viewing the worker as the heart of society to prioritizing money over all else instead. This turning point was reached in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan with the Reagan Revolution, where laissez-faire free-market capitalism and neoliberal policies gained ground. A revolt of the elite against egalitarian ideals became apparent in this era. While the working class had been the backbone of society for decades, the elite sought to consolidate their power, creating a sharp uptick in material consumption, often at the expense of the lower classes.
In the most essential form, capitalism enables both producers and consumers to satisfy their fundamental needs. However, as society has progressed into a new era where continuous economic growth is prioritized over all else, the line between “needs” and “wants” has blurred. Once consumers satisfy their basic needs, they immediately get the leisure to browse various markets and figure out where to spend the accumulated money that no longer is necessary to sustain their livelihood. In the present day, customers make and maintain their image through material possessions. People go on vacations and participate in the newest microtrends to flaunt their purchases, trying to establish themselves as superior to others.
Furthermore, the average working person spends upwards to 2 hours daily on social media. During these hours, they are bombarded with influencer advertisements that persuade them to believe that they need more things—a need that is really just a desire in disguise. Encouraging working people to buy things that they don’t need is a fundamental concept of successful marketing. The rise of consumerism has led to more markets being designed that provide no social benefit. A prime example of this are luxury brands. People work tirelessly to be able to purchase a Louis Vuitton purse or a Rolex watch, products which are suggested to be purchases that symbolize status and prosperity. In reality, they serve no real purpose besides the brand name.
In addition, consumption has reached an astounding high partly due to an increase in consumer sovereignty. Consumer sovereignty is the idea that the most important economic goal is the fulfillment of consumer desire. In other words, the more customer demand, the more production that will ensue to satisfy that demand. This cycle of continuous production prioritizes consumption over other goals. People are incentivized to make more purchases that don’t necessarily improve their well-being. Individuals who are solely focused on product acquisition show greater levels of unhappiness.
In the modern era, it has become apparent that consumption power has become synonymous with liberty. For some, it can be liberating to access new levels of consumption previously reserved for elites, and climb up the socioeconomic ladder on the daily. Essentially, in this era of late-stage capitalism, people have been stripped of real political agency. Voting feels powerless and protests feel inaccessible, so consumerism becomes a substitute to pour our values into. Consumption becomes the only available space for ethical participation in a system that responds to profit over protest. We are conditioned to believe that what we consume is the only thing that we can control.
Inevitably, this pattern of consumerism has emerged as a prominent driver of environmental degradation, pushing our planet to collapse. It has been shown to accelerate resource depletion, intensify pollution, and cause habitat destruction. Food production alone results in around 1.3 billion tons of wasted food annually, a pattern that has only been reinforced in several other industries.
Many attempt to justify this excessive consumption by saying that desire to have things is a natural tendency. While humans do have needs, the hyper-consumption that’s beginning to become the main pleasure we seek in our daily lives is far from essential to survival, and even has the potential to be detrimental to our mental and physical health.
Consumerism has become a pastime in western culture: it’s what we fill our time with so we can feel a sense of individuality. It’s not only a temptation, but how we materialize our social status to peers and express affection to the ones closest to us. However, this pattern has unveiled issues of excessive waste, increasing inequality between classes, and overconsumption. It has been repeatedly established that not all purchases are necessary to sustain livelihood. Consciousness and self-discipline must be exercised to control our behavior on the market. We must reach the understanding that our pockets hold power, and it is a personal responsibility to acknowledge the impact each unnecessary purchase has in the long run.
