Consumption

Introduction

Nowadays, life is hard to live without experiencing some sort of consumeristic activity. Whether it be ads on our social media or traveling by billboard after billboard on the way to work, we often cannot escape the mass consumption messaging that occurs in all sectors of our lives. Specifically for me, I find it hard to focus on my personal freedoms when surfing the internet or even catching a quick bite to eat. 

If I want to order from UberEats, I have about three pop ups during my transaction, asking me to add one more item to my order. If I search the internet for a class topic, I have to look through a series of sources that actually provide me with content, all placed below the top provided sources that paid a fee to be placed there. Consumerism can be defined as “the protection or promotion of the interests of consumers”, according to the Oxford Dictionary. This is a simple definition of a much larger concept, but the overall goal is that the more goods and services produced and purchased will result in a high functioning market. This means that beyond our basic needs, the more frivolous or unnecessary things consumed, the better the economy will operate. Although not everyone is a buyer or seller, we all interact with the economy through our daily activities such as shopping, surfing the web, or buying gas. 

While these are simple, everyday tasks that we have to complete, society is often pushed to consume more than we may want to. In a deeper understanding of the situation, over consumption can be defined as consuming more than what is necessary within our daily tasks or activities (European Environment Information and Observation Network). In our lives, we are constantly hit with this and that, pushed to buy, sell, or consume more things, even if it leads to more than we as a society need to have. This can sometimes lead to new experiences on different fronts that we hadn’t previously thought to try, but this doesn’t always correlate to new experiences and ways of life. If things are adopted into our daily habits, they should always benefit us in some way, right? 

In an attempt to gain real life experiences, society is often prompted to consume more and more things through consumeristic behaviors, while the actual things that we are attempting to experience are lost through our actions of over consumption. Although we typically hope to enjoy the things we consume (or over consume), it can sometimes be too much of the wrong stuff. 

Food

Throughout the U.S., the focus on large quantities of food and higher variety of food options have created an alarming over consumption issue. With large quantities of food, ranging from mukbangs to bulk items, America is well known for having mass amounts of food options and venues. Whether it is streets lined with copious options for getting fast food or having grocery shelves providing over five options for simply purchasing one type of cheese, the options can be endless and overwhelming when it comes to food.  

I vividly remember one of the first conversations I had out at the bar when I was studying abroad in Italy. 

“You guys have those big cereal boxes right? Like thiiisssss big, yeah?” 

After racking my drunken brain for what he could possibly be talking about, he of course had been referring to bulk items within the U.S. When did this begin, and what prompted this insurgence of needing to stock up on so many products? Well, it's simply focused on getting everyone to buy more things than they really need, resulting in surpluses of cash for the sellers. 

From buying huge packs of food to gathering large amounts of fast food to "try all the items", we as a society have been trained to get it while you can. While this can play into what we eat on the daily, such as buying large amounts of oatmeal for breakfast for the next two weeks, it can also leave us with leftovers that we will never consume. Even in my own college house, I have candies left from Halloween, Christmas, and birthday events. Did I eat it all? Sadly, no. I've got Reeses pumpkins and trees from seasons ago, because I couldn't let the seasonal treats leave the shelves before I could consume them, or I guess not consume them. These seasonal ploys are just one way in which we fall victim to buying more than we need. 

When I buy food to-go, or search the store shelves to make something new, I try to focus on the experience of the food I will eat. This isn't always the case though, as life can get busy in the blink of an eye. Fast food allows for a quick bite to eat, letting buyers fit in a meal while life gets busy. I love fast food, but the sheer amount that is made during the production phase leads to immense food waste. According to Skip Shapiro Enterprises, "...restaurant food waste in the U.S. generates approximately 22 to 33 billion pounds of food waste every year." Not only are we allowing this quick fix to accumulate into a bad habit, it is additionally creating consumption levels that accumulate to mass amounts of food waste.

When I worked at Biggby Coffee, a midwest coffee chain, I was firsthand shown how much food can go to waste while not enough consumers are buying. Donuts get stale, bagels get moldy, and old creamers and mixes go past their date, only to all be thrown in the garbage. Is this our fault, or is it consumerist pressures to make and buy more than what is needed? To combat this issue, we are marketed to consume enough to not waste the extras that are produced, but this often results in major casualties of food wasted each and every day. 

While we all should eat the things we enjoy and savor them, as time goes on, this can create an issue for how much food is consumed versus how much food is wasted. According to Feeding America, about 149 billion meals are wasted each year in the U.S. Why do we buy so many snacks only for them to get stale in our cupboards? 

While I walk home from class and buy a Potbelly sub, I know that I will waste the dying lettuce that sits in my fridge, waiting to be consumed. Everything isn’t as black and white as it seems of course; it can be difficult to buy and make food when we are working, raising kids, or running from place to place, but what we need for sustenance is not what we are told to consume by marketers. While we waste food to buy out or skip our grocery list to buy what snacks we saw in a commercial, there are drawbacks to this purchasing power. 

Although everything we do is not defined by what messaging we interact with, we can be led to over consume in ways we don't even realize when it comes to splurging on those tempting snacks and grab-and-go items we so deeply covet in this country. Do we consume food because someone told us to, or do we eat food because we want to experience it?

Clothing

As you may understand by now, I really love buying new clothes - always new to me, but not always new. I often love trying new looks and styles of fashion, but I know that I have simply too many pieces. In some ways, this can help when cyclical styles come back, aka scrunchies, low waisted jeans, y2k aesthetics, etc., but there is something to say about having too much of something good. 

While I have a few favorite sweaters and my best pairs of jeans, I truly do not get to wear all of the clothes that I have. Did I buy them all to sit in my closet? Surely not, but as I type this in my usual study spot on campus, I happen to be wearing the same yoga pants and sweatshirt that I often grab for ease and comfortability. Understandably, we wear clothes for comfort in certain situations, but the reason I crave to buy new clothes is to have the experience of wearing them - not just storing them. 

Emissons 

When I lived in Northern Virginia this past summer, I often found myself trying to utilize the best that the DC Metro could offer me, but it wasn’t always easy. Although I lived just about a mile from the nearest station, it was closed for construction during the summer months I was living there. In this case, I utilized my car and a paid parking spot each time I wanted to travel quickly into the city. While it took a long time with traffic, it was ultimately better than Ubering to the nearest working station to then metro into the city. 

While making the tough decisions to choose where to live in the area after I graduate college, I have been hit with the classic city dilemma: to have a car, or to not have a car? Although living in a big city with public transportation has been my dream, it seems much easier to have a car on hand for any trips I may need to take, or a jaunt to the store that features parking within the city. 

This transportation dilemma isn’t a huge issue for some people, but our environment is deeply in a dilemma with the amount of pollution that we put into our ecosystem. From simple things like taking the metro to recycling our batteries correctly, we could all try a little harder when it comes to limiting our pollutants. Our society is still at a crossroads about global warming (sadly), although it can be shown how our environment has been struggling for decades. Public transportation is a small part of this, but societally, we are all interacting with the problem uniquely. 

In recent news, it was heavily circulated that Taylor Swift had used her private jet to take only a short, 28 mile flight. Is this an effective use of transportation? I won’t speak my mind too heavily, in fear of the most profound Swifties, but I will say that the majority of the internet was not a fan. As described in the last piece, consumption can in some social scenes quantify a specific social status - the more you have, the better you are. This can be seen pretty clearly when famous celebrities or high profile athletes cruise around the world in their carbon-emitting vehicles, while the rest of the world finds other forms of transportation. I’m not trying to sound bitter, but I am trying to clarify how unnecessary this can be. Although Taylor Swift probably could be swarmed by thousands of people if she walked the streets of a city, she surely could take a car to her destination. Fossil fuel emissions are a real issue that the entire world is dealing with, and these societal structures of class that we oblige with in order to reach a higher status are hurting us and our environment.

Although I personally didn’t meet the love of my life on a public bus or experience a life changing scenario while waiting at a metro station, I can say that the interactions we find through networks of public transportation can open up doors and create new experiences. Travel is about the time getting to your destination as well, and the people you meet during these experiences. Whether deciding between taking the bus or driving a car, we need to go places all the time, but the cost shouldn’t be our planet for our own personal advantage. When choosing what to consume and how much of it, we must consider how our consumption can shift experiences within the world we live in.

Media

In my daily life, I spend at least nine hours a day on my computer. Whether working remotely, sitting in classes, or wrapping up my homework each night, using mobile media is quite honestly inseparable from the daily things I have to do. As a college student specifically, media can take up more than half of the hours in a day, depending on how much work we have to complete or if we are spending time researching, looking for jobs, or focusing on a hobby that requires the internet. Not consuming media is out of the question, but do we have to endure so much consumeristic messaging? 

Although we do not always notice it right away, there are ads in all of our media. From the top websites that appear after a Google search or a sponsored video on TikTok, we are slammed to buy new things or check out a site to get them more clicks per view. What are some of these consumeristic messaging techniques being slipping in, making it so we can’t always see? 

In general, when using a search engine, social media platform, or looking on any webpage, the owner of that given media tool is collecting cookies. Cookies allow for the owners of websites to track users movements and habits while on their website (TechTarget). This can allow our information to be tracked while on websites to better target ads for consumers. In this way, more targeted ads can occur on each additional webpage that we utilize when we allow cookies to be collected on our behalf.

For example, if I look for brown purses on Google, I will almost immediately see an ad for a brown purse when looking through my Instagram feed. While tracking our online presence for better marketing techniques, ads are slipped into our Instagram stories or disguised within our TikTok fyp, only to be discovered that it leads to another website or product to consume. 

In tricky ways, marketers are focused on getting consumers to reach for what we think is authentically created by other consumers. Although this can at times help us find products we want or need, this centrally routed messaging can also cloud our judgment, leading us to what sellers want, rather than what our own needs are calling for. 

I argue our needs for media rely on seeking knowledge, relief, and experience. Although not all uses of media can be as easily boiled down to these three categories, we as a society are often pushed to consume something new when we utilize media, rather than using it as a tool for our own individual purposes. Whatever our uses for media happen to be, each step users take to utilize media is halted by consumeristic messaging, pushing us to take in one more ad, piece of material wealth, or new product we didn't previously look to consume. 

Networking

While making LinkedIn connections and amassing followers on social media has become overwhelmingly popular during recent years, this wasn't always the focus of networking. When I first joined my professional fraternity, the first goal set for pledges was to gain 500+ LinkedIn connections. In other cases, new influencers or social media accounts are pressured to have a minimum of 10,000 followers to make an impact in viewership. These can be hard feats, but why are we focused on amassing so many networks, rather than networks of quality?

These connections were useful, but I was constantly worried about having only a handful of connections on LinkedIn. I spent hours friending people in my classes, collecting connections through my major, or reaching out to folks who worked at my previous jobs. It was productive, but still left me with less than the 500+ I so badly craved. 

When I began working at Hilton, I focused on gaining more connections, but also utilizing them and strengthening them. I had made it to my 500+ connection goal by midsummer, only to realize I had coffee chatted only half of who I had connected with. What was the purpose of connecting if only for a number, rather than the wisdom I could gain?

In a similar way, we as a society are often focused on gaining more followers or friends on social media. Are these for making new memories, or achieving a certain social status? As described in the Industrial Desires section, high levels of consumption can lead to elevated social status. While this isn't always ideal, it can heavily infiltrate our reasoning for network consumption. 

Although social media has evolved from just having our closest friends on it to a plethora of company and celebrity accounts, there are numerous amounts of followers I have on accounts that I could connect with, but don't. With endless reasons to make a new friend or reach out to a friendly coworker, our society is focused on the consumption of a network, rather than the strength of it. When attempting to follow someone new, we could try to make plans or suggest doing a new activity with someone, but this isn't seen as normal in our current society. 

While we are forced to create new connections out of professional necessity, we must focus on why we are adding that person into our network in the first place. Is it for followers, a new job recommendation, or to create a new friendship? With each experience we choose to enjoy, we must remember that each addition to our network should be utilized for growth and enjoyment, rather than adding it into a pile of numbers. Expanding a network can become invaluable if it is focused on numbers, rather than the people and experiences behind each new connection. 

If so much of our lives are centered around consumption, how do we combat this immense weight? Learn more about how we fight consumerism with safe communities in Third Spaces.