In today’s age where things are literally one tap away from being bought, it is easy to solve any inconvenience one may have. It’s easy to purchase something when it breaks, easy to solve the problem of your phone charger being too short, easy to purchase something you find reflective of yourself. Buying things is how people have begun to express themselves and solve any problem that comes their way.
Now, this isn’t a new phenomenon. People have defined themselves with items and solved problems the easy way since we could. What’s different about today’s age is how easy it is to do so – especially in America. Amazon Prime has done more for society than sliced bread, according to us.
With this era of convenience, it’s really easy to forget exactly how hard people have had to work for us to sit where we are today. As a history student, I grapple with that reality more often than most I would think, and it gives me an appreciation and gratitude I wouldn’t have otherwise. I see the laborers in the first factories in New England who literally died for us to have worker’s rights in the textile industry for my clothes today – the slave labor that built the streets of Tallahassee that I walked down on a field trip. Recognizing how hard people have had to work in the past for our modern day is something I think we all should practice more.
In the same vein, the mass consumption we see today has rendered us uncreative. We do not create anymore. People don’t want to paint their own items, don’t want to try to make a bracelet, don’t want to solve this problem outside of repurchasing the item. When a desk breaks, rather than use some muscle and repair it, the average person seems to just throw it out and repurchase it. This goes back to hard work going into items – if the person originally had to build the desk, they’d just repair it. If we worked harder for our items, or it was less convenient to replace them, we’d solve the problem differently. Why don’t we do that anyway?! It’s baffling to me to see the number of Amazon packages people purchase and unbox – full of things that are excessive.
The concept of ‘following the trend’ is not new either, and the topic of trendfollowers and overconsumption is probably over discussed. People want to fit in and have things in common with the rest of society, to no fault of our own, we’re social creatures, but it does lead us to consuming way more than we actually need to. People are now able to follow trends at light speed, and those ‘trendy’ items are only one click away – leading to more consumption than ever. It’s alarming and disgusting to watch online – and it’s completely stripping away any creativity. In conversations with my peers, we discuss how some groups of people look like cookie-cutter people, all wearing the same crewnecks and shorts, down to the same keyrings for their car keys. I believe it’s directly correlated to the rise of social media, and everyone following the same ‘influencers’ that are telling them to buy the same things. Seeing this loss of creativity and individuality to favor purchasing the same items over and over is disheartening to the human soul.
Rather than think about how to express themselves or solve a problem, people today are just clicking ‘Purchase’ and then having their face scanned before the tracking notification pops up. This has led to a massive loss of individuality – and a lot of Amazon packages. Watching everyone simply follow the trends is disheartening, especially as a young person. I hope we can all find the courage to express ourselves and be creative – as someone who tries to embrace that lifestyle, it’s way more fun over here.