Module 3: Analyse the consumer society and our socio-technical context
Aim of the module
The aim of this learning module is to cover a wide range of skills and knowledge needed for teachers and trainers to encourage young people to critically examine the ethical dimensions of a consumer society. The module will outline the historical development of the consumer society, its impact on social values and the role of technology in shaping purchasing habits and lifestyles.
Learning outcomes
After completion of this module the learners will gain the knowledge and skills as listed below:
Knowledge
- Understanding the history of consumer societies
- Knowledge of the concept of consumer societies
- Understand the development from consumption to survive into consumption for image
- The psychology behind consumption
- Knowledge of how the brain makes us consume
- Understanding what dopamine is and how it affects your decisions
- Websites and algorithms that drive shopping behaviours
- Knowledge of the concept of algorithms
- Understand how algorithms work to make you buy more
- Consumption and ethics
Knowledge of why you should be more restrictive of consumption
Understand about waste connected to consumption and its environmental impact
Understand that products are made for obsoletion, so that you as a consumer are forced to replace (buy more) rather than repair.
Skills
- Examination of the ethical dimensions of consumer society
Proficiency in explaining to learners so that they will understand the way ads and algorithms work
Skills to help learners to restrict own consumption for the sake of the environment
- Critically think and recognise how influencers try to lure you
Ability to empower learner to be critical of how influencers try to influence you
Skills to help learners toy to separate their own opinion from that of others
Ability to support learners to stand their own ground against influence of mass media
List of Topics
Topic 1 discusses the historical development of consumer society, tracing its evolution from hunter-gatherer communities to modern times. It explores how marketing and industrialisation have driven consumption, creating a society focused on acquiring goods. The topic also examines the environmental impact of consumerism and introduces the concept of ethical consumerism, encouraging individuals to make more responsible purchasing decisions.
Topic 2 explores the psychology behind consumption, highlighting how shopping behaviours trigger dopamine release in the brain, like addiction. It delves into the role of algorithms in driving consumer behaviour and the influence of social media and influencers. The topic also discusses the ethical implications of these behaviours and the importance of critical thinking in making informed purchasing decisions.
Objective, Key Concepts, Skills to Develop
By the end of this module, you will be able to:
- Understand the development of consumer society from hunter/gatherer communities until consumption today.
- Know some theories about how and why the society has become so consumption driven.
- Understand how dopamine affects your brain to consume more.
- Learn about consumption’s effect on the environment and what you can do to become more ethical consumers.
Guide for Learning
To optimise your learning in this module we encourage you to find examples from your own life and analyse why you want to buy things that you perhaps don’t need. By becoming aware of why you sometimes feel that you must buy things and wear certain clothes to affirm your self-image, it might be easier to change your consumption pattern.
By applying the theories in this module on your own experiences and life will make it easier to reme
Motivating Case Study
Sofia is 16 years old. She goes to high school and is very concerned about the environment. The teacher in her natural science class is very engaging and is able to involve the whole class. But Sofia also wants to look good because there is a boy in her class that she likes.
Sofia wants to buy a new lipstick that her influencer heroine showed on Instagram the week before. But it costs too much, and she can’t afford it. Her mother doesn’t want to give her the money because she says that Sofia already has a similar shade and tells her to get a job if she wants to get the lipstick. Her father encourages Sofia to think and reflect on whether she really needs the lipstick when she already has a similar one but a different brand, in her influencer’s view, an inferior brand. He tells her to think about the environment and challenges her to do some research about the environmental impact of shopping and consumption. He says that he might give her the money if she can show that the new brand is good for the environment.
Sofia decides to listen to him and checks out the brands on the internet. It turns out that the lipstick she already has is better for the environment and that the one the influencer promotes isn’t good at all. Sofia checks the reviews and decides that perhaps the influencer she follows isn’t a nice person and she doesn’t care about the environment.
Through this training module, trainers will learn how to empower young people like Sofia to question consumption and think before buying more. Equipped with these skills, young learners will become informed consumers and understand how big companies take advantage of consumers, often at the cost of the environment.
Topic 1 - History of consumer society and it’s ethical dimension
From the industrial revolution to modern society
Historically humans acquired food and things that they needed for survival. They gathered or hunted for food that were essential for everyday life. If someone had more than they needed, they would barter it for other things. With the development of cities and the industrial revolution, the production of consumer goods increased, and they had to sell more and more to keep the machinery going.
To entice the need for buying, companies had to market these goods to create a “want” for goods that the consumer often doesn’t need. Marketing encourages people to buy more than they need. You will learn how post-industrial revolution manufacturers have turned into making products with a lower shelf life to drive consumption.
Consumption has been driven by mail – radio – TV and now internet marketing. Credit cards made it even easier to buy things. Special days have been created by industry, where you are encouraged to buy gifts, like Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Valentine’s Day and so on. More recently, more shopping encouraging days have been invented by clever marketers, such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday. With the success of these days, Black Friday has been extended to Black Week and even Black Month, just to keep the ever-turning shopping wheel going.
Amazon made it even easier to buy everything you need without leaving the house. Amazon built their entire business on on-line shopping and saw the massive value of the “1-click to Buy” button to drive shopping. The problem is that products had to be packaged, which creates waste, which again affects the environment. Plastic, and especially microplastics, which are small plastic particles that come from the degradation of plastics are found in food and animals. The current level is probably not dangerous for humans, but over time, it undoubtedly will cause harm according to scientists. Plastic bags that are not properly disposed of are already causing massive harm to fish and other organisms who live in the ocean.
To illustrate this, in 2021, the EU generated an estimated 188.7 kg of packaging waste per inhabitant (varying from 73.8 kg per inhabitant in Croatia to 246.1 kg per inhabitant in Ireland).
Marketing – from pamphlets to influencers
Although advertising already existed in ancient times, mass production made consumption essential for keeping the factories going end economies growing. To make people buy more and more, advertising companies boomed in the 20th century, as radio and television became household goods. Catchy jingles and slogans became tied to logos and products, and companies spent enormous amounts to make customers loyal to their brand of clothes, shoes, food, soft drinks etc.
In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, digital platforms opened the possibility for more targeted and personalised ads. The internet made advertising cheaper with e-mails and pop-up advertisements based on algorithms that analyse your search and on-line activity history.
To increase consumption, businesses had to make you buy more than you needed and replace what you have for newer versions of essentially the same product. By introducing trends, they created the concept of “perceived obsolescence” so that people bought more things and threw away what they have, even though it still was in perfectly good working order. The key was to create the perception that it was not trendy anymore. In addition, marketing used models who projected certain lifestyles that you as a consumer aspire to. The message was for example that: “if you use this deodorant, women will fall for you”, “if you have this car, you will be happy”, etc But models or actors in commercials are still very different from ordinary persons, so enter the influencer.
Influencers are ordinary people who live ordinary lives and share their lifestyle, the products they wear, use or like on-line. Often, they get paid to review a product or wear certain clothes. They have followers and can exert a lot of influence on them. By liking certain things, they can entice their followers to do the same. Some influencers even get their own shows where you can watch their lives on TV. People become famous for being famous instead of something that they are good at. There are no huge barriers to becoming an influencer. All you need is enough people who are interested in what you say or do or are inspired by your perceived lifestyle and image.
Resources
Watch this video made by the Educational video on Sustainable Consumption produced on behalf of the European Commission (Directorate-General for Justice and Consumers).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA73wtV9RqA
This is a video suited for children from the Smileandlearn.com YouTube channel with many more videos. The site as an award for the European Commission:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhoa3OHivN8
The last chapters of the book Sapiens: A brief history of humankind paints a realistic picture of consumerism, By Yuval Noah Harrari
Practical exercise
Part 1
Individual task:
Be honest with yourself!
Questions:
- Do you sometimes buy something that you don’t need and regret it?
- Do you sometimes buy something just because it is cheap?
- Do you sometimes buy something because the ad was cool?
Group work:
Share with the group. Discuss:
Do you have the same urges to buy things?
Discuss similarities and differences.
Part 2
Case:
Mother’s Day is on Sunday and Sofia still hadn’t bought a gift for her mother. She typed “Mother’s Day” in the google search engine, and the screen filled instantly up with things she could buy and do on Mother’s Day. What do you give someone who has everything, she thought. Perhaps a scented candle? It was so easy to buy it. They had same day delivery, or you could pick it up after 30 minutes in the store.
Brainstorm.
What can she do to make her mother happy apart from buying things?
Topic 2 – The psychology of consumption and algorithms
Dopamine and addiction
In the last section we discussed how companies have created the perception to buy more. In this section we will outline the psychology behind consumption. There are many behaviours that make people happy and makes the brain release the hormone dopamine. We will explain what dopamine is, and how it can make you addicted to different behaviours.
Shopping and the use of social media and on-line gaming have one thing in common, they can make you feel good. Social media encourages you to upload pictures of yourself that others will like. It is positive feedback that makes you happy. If you play a game that you are good at and that game gives you feedback, you will be happy. When you have good experiences on screen, be it from gaming or social media feedback or shopping, your brain will release dopamine. Dopamine is a substance that the brain produces, which gives you a feeling of happiness. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that, among other things, produces a feeling of pleasure, expectation of pleasure and motivation. Because you want to keep feeling pleasure, you want to play more, buy more and post more on social media. This part of the brain is activated faster than the frontal lobe, which is your logical brain. This leads to the logical brain not making decisions anymore. What is also frightening is that the reward system changes the memories associated with what is right and wrong, so that the frontal lobe can no longer distinguish between right and wrong, and you will follow your impulses and emotions instead of thinking.
The brain changes with addiction and tricks itself into thinking you must have the drug you’re addicted to. A simplified picture of the area of the brain being affected by addiction can be seen here.
Let’s call this Ali’s brain. He is on social media where his friends like his posts. It feels good when they comment and tell him that he is funny. This causes the ventral tegmental area, VTA, to send dopamine toward the nucleus accumbens and amygdala. The dopamine rush makes him think that he must do it again. Nucleus accumbens is an area that magnifies the positive aspects of a reward and makes you want to repeat that experience. The frontal lobe is the area of the brain that carries out things and thinks logically. This is related to how you can distinguish between conflicting thoughts: what is bad and good, better and best, same and different, future consequences of your actions and even controlling them in social situations. Screen addiction is when the player no longer has control over their own screen use at the cost of sleeping. The screen use becomes all-consuming and can cause depression if nobody likes your post and comments or criticises you.
The dopamine hypothesis suggests that you can be affected by all sorts of addictions such as nicotine, alcohol, drugs, cults, religion, love relationships, anger and so on. You are perceptible to become addicted when you get the taste of one of the things that trigger the release of your dopamine. Personal experience and genetics influence what an individual becomes dependent on. Over time, the brain will adapt to the substance or activity that was previously very attractive, making it less interesting. The brain responds by producing less dopamine or eliminating dopamine receptors, so the body does not perceive the dopamine that is in the system. This leads to the need to play more to get the same effect. These adaptations mean that natural dopamine has less effect on the reward system in the brain over time.
Some Chinese researchers therefore call the technology digital heroin. Dr. Peter Wibrow, director of neuro-research at the University of California in LA calls screens electronic cocaine. In addition, research shows that the only addiction treatment that works is to cut it out completely for a period, until the brain no longer gets the desire to play or drink or whatever it depends on. Research shows that how long a person needs to completely abstain from the addictive activity varies from person to person. However, generally most people need to stop using social media, gaming or watch porn for anywhere from two to five or six weeks.
You are what you consume
Companies do anything to lure you into buying their products. To increase consumption, they make many similar products which they try to convince you to buy more and more of. Companies started to use fashion models in the early 20th century. This was to try to sell the lifestyle of a model. The message they sell is that if you wear this dress or this make up you will be happy. If you are beautiful like me, you will be happy. The concept is the same for other products, like furniture or cars. If you buy this, you will be happy. It creates the feeling that it is important to follow the trends, to be fashionable and that products make you happy.
With the advent of social media platforms like Instagram and YouTube, a new type of celebrity emerged, the influencer.
The difference between models and influencers are:
- Authenticity: influencers are more relatable as they are more personal and create the feeling that they could be your friend.
- Engagement: influencers have higher engagement rates which makes endorsements more impactful
- Diversity: the influencers have more diverse backgrounds than models, and have an image of being more like you
An influencer can be the star from a reality show, or just a pretty or interesting person with an interesting message. With social media being open for all, everyone can upload content and say whatever they like. Some people take advantage of this and can feed you with misinformation. It is easy to believe people if you already follow them. For most of the time they might seem harmless, but now and then they might communicate messages that are not good for you. They can convey attitudes, like sexist or racist, even radicalised ideas. It is therefore important to be critical to what you hear.
Algorithms
The makers of social media, gaming, gambling and pornographic sites have employed clever psychologists to make you stay on their websites. These psychologists know how your brain works when it is being addicted and will use that knowledge to trap you. The goal of each website is either to make you buy something or to just stay there as long as possible. Most websites place cookies on your computer, pad or phone to track what your preferences are on a website. Usually, a cookie is designed to remember and tell a website some useful information about you and display information they think you want. The problem with this might be that you become so interested that you forget to exit the site. If you for example buy something, they will usually show you similar things to make you buy more. Cookies send information to search engines that use algorithms to make advertisements that you are interested in, which can even pop up when you are on other sites. Some cookies are more aggressive than others, to the point of scaring you. Some pop-up ads can tell you that your device is infested and if you click it, they can help you. Such pop-ups are not advertisements but malware or spyware or even computer viruses that will try to extort money from the user. In the end, such software is created to tamper with your device and make your life miserable.
Search engines and web sites use cookies, cookies are small pieces of information that a web browser stores from websites. They are processed to provide the user with a more personalized browsing experience, for example when shopping on-line, doing research, or socialising. Algorithms are sequences or procedures of how data is being processed by computers in solving problems. It is like a recipe for cooking where the result is a dish. Browsing algorithms are computer codes that aim to get a user to shop or stay on a web site. The algorithms base their computations on cookies that registers the number of page views a site gets, the number of visitors on each page, the length of user sessions etc. They use this data to send you YouTube, Instagram and TikTok which are well known social media sites where you get recommendations of similar videos. But sometimes you also get recommendations for videos that you didn’t search for, like violent videos, videos with self-harm, suicide, sexual behaviour, radicalised messages etc.
Jeff Bezos started Amazon.com web site by selling books, but soon went on to sell everything, becoming the “everything store”. One of the success factors were probably personalised ads on their own sites and video ads on YouTube, enhanced by the 1-click Buy button. They also use influencers who could market their goods and get provision from sales. The success of Amazon led to the Chinese entering the international on-line shopping market with sites like AliExpress followed by JD.com, LightInTheBox and Shein. In 2024, Temu, another China-based ecommerce platform, is flooding the internet with advertisements. These sites sell cheap goods which are not necessarily of good and lasting quality. However, they can also offer good quality merchandise at a reasonable price. Common to all these sites is that they offer product reviews and ratings from people that have bought the product. This allows the user to make a somewhat informed decision. More importantly to the company is that these reviews encourage more shopping
These ecommerce shopping platforms will try to lure you back with bonuses and sales, often time restricted to make you addicted, the same way games do. They use spinning wheels, flashing lights and time to appeal to your competitive genes. If you are not careful, they will also send you prompts to remind you that you have “won” something so that you will open the app and be tempted to buy something.
Next time you go to one of these sites, take a moment to think about whether what you are about to buy, or if you just buy to get a dopamine fix.
Resources
A video that explains why the brain wants to shop by the page Big Think, explained by a neuroscientist:
Common motives behind media manipulation include:
Practical exercise
Divide the participants into groups of 3-4 learners. Watch these videos and discuss the questions below:
Andrew Tate: Man up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBO9pMU5phY
What is the message of this video?
What dangers do you see in this video?
What could be the problem with this video?
Interview about Tweet:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MsPayaH6Q_M
How does the message promote gender inequality?
Discuss
Share in the group:
- What influencers do you follow?
- Why do follow these influencers?
- Show the rest of the group one of your favourite videos of the influencer
- Be critical of him/her, what does he say that might be wrong? Nothing?
Module Summary
The module aims to equip teachers and trainers with the skills and knowledge to analyse consumer society and its socio-technical context.
Learning Outcomes
By the end of this module, learners will gain knowledge and skills in:
- The history and psychology of consumer societies.
- The impact of technology and algorithms on shopping behaviours.
- Ethical considerations in consumption.
- Designing interactive learning materials using digital technologies.
Module 3: Quiz
Glossary of terms
Is a person on social media that influences your life by telling you about their life and life wisdom or showing you how they are living their life to influence your thoughts and habits.
Bibliography and references
Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them. Project number: 2023-1-NO01-KA220-ADU-
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