Faith Tong Week 4: Identity in materialistic things
Faith Tong Week 4: Identity in Materialistic Things
A thought came to my head one day, about how much I care about what I have. Do I have the latest iPhone? Are my clothes in trend? What do I not have that others' have? All these ideas are somehow built into my mindset, telling me that I need all of these "things" to be normal or even accepted. I was really curious if this was an psychological kind of need so I found an article about "The Psychology Of Stuff And Things".
In this article, the author tells us that "materialism peaked at middle adolescence (I'm assuming teenagers) just when self esteem tended to be lowest". This caught my attention, which was ironic since I am a teenager myself and hear about the issue of low self esteem a lot on social media. I never looked at self esteem as something that could be linked to materialism, so this was really eye-opening. I always assumed people liked buying stuff because it's their interest or they're just trying to flex how rich they are (totally not salty). But now I can see that people, including myself, tend to buy things that are either in trend or fancy to make up for our lack of self esteem, boosting our self esteem in a way. It would make me feel like I at least have something that makes me look good in other peoples' eyes.
The author then goes on to say that "through adolescence, possessions increasingly reflect who people are. "This also relates to the "first impression" or otherwise known as judgement from one glance. So many times I catch myself trying to impress new people with either my outfits, my appearance, etc. To me it's very hard to let go of these possessions I cling onto to support my wavering self esteem. But at the same time, I know I can't hang on to these materialistic things forever, I have to be able to be myself no matter what I have or don't have.
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