Effects of Consumer Culture on Society

I believe that consumer culture has had a negative effect on society. I believe this for many reasons, one of them being that Americans are, in a way, brainwashed into believing that we “need” something, or they have to look a certain way to fit in. advertising companies don’t just target adults, they also purposely target young children. They do this because they know that children’s brains are not fully developed and are very easily tricked into thinking that they need a certain toy or game to be cool and have friends.

The main idea that Americans are brainwashed into thinking is, “you have needs and you won’t be fulfilled until you buy the right product to fill those needs.” There are many problems with this message. One of them is that it is very misleading; this is because “it is a quick fix, at best, because while you feel better for a little while, it won’t last and you will have to buy something to fulfill that need.”, and most of the time the “something” you have to buy to fulfill that need will usually be bigger, better, and more expensive. This leads to issues such as credit card debt. In 1999 the over all credit card debt totaled more than $500 billion and the debt for a household was $4,500, an increase in $2,250 from 1990. This resulted in many Americans filing for individual bankruptcy. Another reason so many Americans filed for individual bankruptcy was because of the wide spread availability to purchase merchandise from your home computer or almost any computer that has internet. Internet shopping has resulted in an over all total of over 20 billion dollars in credit card debt for Americans. Americans today have become lazy