We have seen a lot of advertisement on the digital world, if we address specifically then we come to know that the social media apps and websites are the most targeted platforms for spreading advertising stuff no time ever before. If anyone thinks, why is it so? Because these are the platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Line, Vine, Whatsapp and many others on which advertising has spread on the regular basis. We often saw the advertisement regarding products such as clothes, tech gadgets, shoes, cosmetic products and plenty of others. People from all ages are influenced by social media websites and social IM apps, so the business companies make target to these platforms and pay heavily to the owners of the social media for the advertisement of their particular products. When people see these advertisements they tend towards purchasing the luxury products at any cost. Mostly young generation is the most effective community through these advertisements.
So, resultantly the youngsters do scrolling, trolling and your name on social apps and websites in order to buy the products which are advertised on the social media platforms. So, how youngsters are increasing their expenses and without realizing adopts materialistic approach?
According to Researchers of San Diago State University:
In the current scenario, a question has arisen that today’s youth is more materialistic and less motivated as compare to the past generations. Finally, the psychology professor Jean M. Twenge and co-author professor of psychology at Knox College Tim Kasser has answered the question.
“Twenge and Kasser stated that there is definitely increasing gap for today’s youngsters between materialism and less desire to work harder”. “If we compare to previous generations with the current high school’s graduates are more likely to want the huge amount of money but less willingly to put their efforts in hard work in order to earn material things, Twenge stated that in his book “Generations Me”.
Professors of psychology “Twenge” and Kesser have driven their views on the basis of the national survey conducted 355,000 US high school seniors conducted since 1976 up to 2007. The survey was based on three generations which actually focusing on the importance of having the huge amount of money and material goods and a tendency of doing hard work.
The Fantasy Gap:
- While comparing with the 70’s youth with the current high school students are more materialistic, almost 62% of students had their view that it is important to have the huge amount of money. Only 48% had the same believe as the 70’s youth had.
- The tendency to do hard work, 39% of the current youth admitted that they did not want to do hard work.
- The researchers also stated that the youth become more materialistic when advertising spending made up greater percentage.
- Advertising is playing a crucial role in the development of youth materialism, Twenge stated that.
- According to” Kasser”, Materialism is important for today’s youth because of making the priority getting huge money and possessions which resultantly causes plenty of issues, includes depression and anxiety.
So, it means that the advertising in any form influence the mind of the people whether it is in the form of billboards, social media, print media, electronic media or anywhere else.
There are Following Factors Which Lead Younger Generation to be a Materialistic.
Smartphones:
Since the technology has developed smartphones, the whole humanity becomes totally dependable to the smartphones tech-gadgets. Now at the moment, even young kids and teens don’t want to go school without the cell phone. Most of the kids and young teens force their parents to buy them latest smartphone with every passing year. Parents have to work hard in order to buy their young kids and teen’s smartphones. When young kids see a high specifications based phone in their fellow’s hands next day they ask their parents to buy them too without realizing how costly it may be.
Use of social Media:
Most of the youngsters have their own smartphone and accounts on the social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, twitter, Tinder and many others. Youngsters share their photos and videos wearing luxury clothes, girls mostly shared their pictures of shopping in malls along with the captions and advertisement of the costly cosmetic products. Then the social media users who even don’t afford these products have an urge to get these luxury things.
Advertisement:
Advertisement in any form, whether it is on the social media in the form of digital marketing, electronic media in the form of commercials, in print media in the form of magazines and signboards and billboards has played a huge impact on human’s mind. So the deceptive advertisement is the largest factor making young generation materialistic.
How to Prevent Materialistic Approach Among Youngsters?
The first and the last efforts parents need to perform to eliminate the materialistic approach in their young teenagers. Parents have to keep in mind that, once the materialistic approach adopted by their kids then it is very difficult to eliminate it. So parents have to look after their young teens at the time when their kids start understanding the value of anything. There are some following mentions tactics which can help parents to eradicate the materialism in youngsters.
- When you give money to your teenage child, it should be based on a regular allowance and also categorize in three forms spending, saving and giving.
- Guide your young son or daughter about the finance, tell them how your income and expenses affect them and to the whole family.
- Parents need to make the clear difference between wants and needs.
- Guide your kids what actually drives them to spend money such as advertising on any platform such as social networking apps.
- Guide your kids to be the role model, that how you manage to make well balance between needing, wanting and spending money.
Parents can also use monitoring software such as TheOneSpy in order to view their activities on smartphones what they perform on social media such as what sort of photos and what sort of videos they view and share, what sort of websites they visit along with the accurate time stamp. Parents just need to install the TOS application on their teen’s device. Then in case they are visiting fashion based websites in order to see the latest fashion wears, you just need to use monitor their internet activities of the spy app then you can see browsing history logs and you can view their saved bookma
rks on the targeted device. If you think that social messaging apps and heavy advertisement on it may attract your child and he/she get influence from it, then parents just need to use the IM social media logs of the mobile parental monitoring app. Parents can also view all the selfies, photos and videos shared by their kids with the help of view multimedia files monitoring app.
Conclusion:
The social media is equally responsible for spreading materialistic approach among the youngsters. Parents need to adopt some methods to guide their young kids what is necessary for them and what is just wasting time and money. TheOneSpy is the only monitoring application of its kind, which is handy for eradicating the social problems among the youth; it aims to serve humanity to the fullest.
