Materialism.
Materialism is the importance placed on material possessions. Someone with a high level of materialism, described as "materialistic," considers material possessions to be central to their life and their identity, and focuses a good deal of their energy on acquiring possessions. Someone with a low level of materialism, described as "non-materialistic," or "not materialistic," does not consider acquiring possessions to be particularly important, although they vary in the extent to which they acquire material possessions in order to meet other objectives, such as social acceptance. Quite simply it's the theory where people place material objects over people.
Statistics
-Total U.S. credit card debt: $793,100,000,000
-U.S. spends annually on imported toys: $23,631,000,000
-Consumers 65 and older are increasing their debt faster than any other age group in the past year
-Consumer spending is driving 70 percent of all economic activity in the U.S
-For the first quarter of 2014, which shows a $129 billion increase in overall household debt from the previous period.
-American's spent $220,000,000,000 on Christmas decoration in 2004. This is 9 times the national budget of Ethiopia and 14 times what the U.S gives in financial aid.
62 percent of students surveyed in 2005-07 think it’s important to have a lot of money, while just 48 percent had the same belief in 1976-78.
-More than one in three, 9 to 14 year olds prefer buying things than most other things they do. Almost two thirds are only interested in jobs that pay lots of money.
-1 percept of material we consume is still in use 6 months after we consume them
Other Issues Around Materialism
My Story
The amount of marketing messages we see a day range from 3,000 to 20,000. Those higher numbers include every time you pass by a label in a grocery store, all the ads in your mailbox whether you see them or not, the label on everything you wear, etc. Advertisement plays a big role in the point of an ad is to make us unhappy with what he have - we are told "we are wrong" and buying things will make our lives better making us happy. THIS IS NOT TRUE!
Materialism causes a lot of different issues.
My name is Aman Pabla and I believe materialism is big problem with little attention given to it. It’s a topic which is seen all throughout one’s day however, it is seen as normal. I am currently 17 years old in my final year in high school and as I reflect back on my life, I realize how much we want, need and obsess over inanimate objects. Everybody wants the newest, greatest and shiniest object no matter what. Now why is this? Simply it’s to fit in and be “accepted”. This is why we shop at certain places over another, buy certain products over another, etc. Now another really important thing is that we are constantly told that what we have sucks. Through television, internet, magazines, newspapers etc. We are told that our products are dated, not effective and not “up to date”. This makes us believe we must go out and buy the latest and greatest, the constant ideal of “keeping up with the joneses. We’ve all done this and been through this. I remember when I camped outside a footlocker to buy a pair of shoes. Now these shoes do not make me faster, stronger or better the pair are just a regular pair of shoes. So what was the mentality to camp out? It’s because we are told we NEED these items and they will bring us happiness but this is simply un true...
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Two causes you should definitly suppoort are "The Story of Stuff" as wel as "AdBusters". Links are to the right
What You Can Do Daily
Lower The Use Of Social Media
Buy what you NEED
Stop making shopping a recreational activity
Limit Television
Limit Web Browsing
Increase Self Esteem
SPREAD THE WORD
