Many teenagers in America today use the popular social media app Instagram. Daily posts range from clothes and hairstyles to food. Although the purpose of this app is to express people’s daily lifestyle, some use it to convey their (or their parents’) wealth. These users are known as “The Rich Kids of Instagram,” their typical daily posts exposing their posh lifestyle.
A Tumblr blog has recently been created to display their posts including $40,000 Dom Pérignon receipts, Christian Louboutin pumps, and tanning sessions in San Tropez. While these posts seem harmless, they are creating tremendous harm on the future generations of our society. Each post teaches kids to be irresponsible and to depend on their parents’ wealth to excel in life, rather than have their own responsibility. If we continue to promote these images, our society will gradually become conceited and value material possessions rather than personal characteristics.
There have been a multitude of reactions from the Tumblr site, mainly those of anger and disgust because of the careless display of moral values amongst teenagers today. These ideologies of displaying wealth are reactions to popular reality T.V. shows, such as Keeping Up With the Kardashians and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, who specifically popularize teenagers having unlimited access to their parents credit cards therefore being able to buy whatever they want, without truly knowing the value of a dollar. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, not only glamorizes women’s luxurious stay at home, carefree lifestyles, but has also become one of the highest viewed T.V. shows in America along with KUWTK, which yet again signals our obsession with the status of wealth. Some teenagers idolize these figures, and want to be just like them when they are older, which leads to the creation of blogs like “The Rich Kids of Instagram”. Overall these shows not only promote wealth, but they also encourage teenagers to publicize their lifestyles just as the T.V. stars do, hoping to gain fame from doing this.
The values of our society will never change from a materialistic viewpoint, causing us to diverge from our intended path of valuing moral character over money because of our uncanny desire to live just as the stars do.