Social Media: Your Life Checklist on Steroids
Your Life Checklist on its own is not a problem. Having goals keeps you motivated and excited about what’s coming next. The problems start when your Life Checklist pushes you to make financial decisions that are detrimental to your financial health in an attempt to keep up with unrealistic expectations. Make no mistake, modern life has messed with our lifestyle expectations big time by ratcheting up the cost of daily life and making us feel financially inadequate most of the time. I blame a lot of this on social media.
Social media take the concept of keeping up with the Joneses and put it on steroids. It’s just about the worst thing to happen to our bank accounts since overdraft protection. From where I sit, it has slowly but surely made daily life more and more expensive over time, and I don’t think it’s simply an adjustment for inflation.
A study by the Columbia Business School found that people with high social media usage have higher credit card debt than people who use social media less often. In addition, the study also found that social media use reduces self-control, which I know directly relates to your ability to stick to a budget.
The hold that social media have on us is powerful and dangerous because it fans the flames of the Inadequacy Influence. Through our many social media feeds, we’re all painfully aware of how many other people—our people—are succeeding at their Life Checklist and how we may be falling behind or missing out.
Scroll through your social media feeds. Bet you’ll see tons of noteworthy and awesome things that your friends and peers are up to. Carefully curated photos of fabulous dinners, exciting family outings, nice cars and happy babies, or maybe a selfie taken while cooking an outrageously delicious and beautifully presented meal. But those pictures tell only a fraction of the story. Behind every great photo is a bill. And rare is the person who will publicly admit that they’re carrying a balance on their credit card because they just bought a computer they couldn’t afford.
Social media are like one giant lifestyle advertisement in which your friends are the models. House porn, food porn, trip porn, gadget porn . . . as you scroll through, it’s hard not to compare your own life and your own financial situation to that of your friends.
FOMO (fear of missing out) is perfectly natural and boringly human. For example, if there’s a social outing that you want to attend with family or friends, you will likely go even if you can’t afford it, in order to avoid feeling left out. This is FOMO, and our budgets are most affected when it comes to—
• parties
• family gatherings
• anything related to weddings (bachelorettes, showers, the wedding itself)
• dinner out with friends
• trips
• buying houses/condos/property
• starting a family
• retiring early
Much of this is social spending with your people. Your people are hanging out together and having a good time, and you don’t want to miss out on the fun or be seen as not caring enough.
Thanks to social media, you are now much more aware of missing out. Staying in while your pals are out apple-picking or at a play or at a stag-and-doe feels so much worse when you’re watching Netflix at home in your sweatpants while eating Cheerios out of the box.
It’s one thing to say “Nope, I’m staying in, wearing sweats and not answering my phone” because you want to. It’s a whole other thing to stay in when you really want to go somewhere but can’t afford it. That’s the real FOMO, the financially caused FOMO. That’s what makes it hard to say no to spending and makes you feel broke.
Most people aren’t posting photos to purposefully make other people feel inadequate or to show off. But unconsciously that’s exactly what we are all doing. When we share something on social media, it’s usually noteworthy or pretty or fun. It heightens the awesomeness and lifestyle expectations of daily life. And with those, the cost.
A good example of how social media can raise your daily cost of living is something I call the “I see, therefore I want” effect. A great example of this is seen in my client Cheri. Over a few years of scrolling through her social media feeds, she noticed that charcuterie boards were popping up more and more when her people were hosting an evening. Seems mundane, no? Like, who cares if her people put out some meat and cheese when they host a party? But these beautiful boards seemed to have become a new hosting standard among the people she followed.
Five years ago she hadn’t felt the need to buy anything other than chips and dip for a girls’ night. And her girlfriends probably didn’t care, but now, thanks to her social media feed, Cheri did. She wanted to show them that they were important to her and that she was a good host. These days when her girlfriends are coming over, she picks up some nice meat, cheese and pickles without a second thought. She doesn’t resent doing it; it actually makes her really happy. But it is a new expectation she has set for herself, an expectation created entirely by social media, and now it costs her $40 when she hosts, versus the usual $15 she spent three years ago.
Trust me, no one was posting photos with charcuterie in the background to make her feel inadequate or raise the financial stakes in her life, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t have exactly that effect. Perhaps charcuterie boards aren’t your thing, but maybe constantly seeing people’s beautiful latte photos makes your daily cup of joe seem lame. Or maybe the photos of new parents with the latest and greatest baby strollers make your hand-me-down stroller seem inadequate. And doesn’t your discount gym membership seem a little unexciting when you see all your people hitting up neat fitness and wellness classes on the weekend? This is how social media sneak in and up the financial costs of your daily life. If you followed only one person, you would probably see something that gave you a pang of jealousy or ratcheted up the financial cost of life only once in a while. But because most people follow a lot more than that, odds are that a simple scroll through your feeds will show you countless photos of people doing noteworthy, awesome things in beautiful places that cost money. It’s inescapable and it’s dangerous, especially when it comes to your Life Checklist.
If you’re single and looking for love, photos of engagements and weddings can exacerbate your fear of never finding “the one,” making you feel as if you’re falling behind. If you want to buy a home but know you can’t afford it, photos of first-time homebuyers your age will make you feel more than inadequate. Social media prey on your weaknesses—your Life Checklist triggers—and heighten your sense of inadequacy. Social media make you much more aware than ever before of how the people you compare yourself to are living.
A Family Vacation Hijacked by Social Media
In a recent financial planning meeting I met with Bailey and her partner, Kim. It wasn’t our first meeting, but despite the plan that we had created for them, Kim and Bailey had spent way beyond their means for a family vacation. A month later, faced with the looming credit card bill, they were anxious and feeling guilty about it. Between mortgage payments, car payments, afterschool daycare programs and grocery bills, there wasn’t a lot of wiggle room to pay down the new credit card bill. It was going to take them six months at least, and during that time they’d have to put off their planned savings for their emergency fund.
The last time Kim and Bailey sat down with me, they had planned to save $1,000 for a family camping vacation. Somehow they ended up spending $4,500 at a resort instead, and the additional $3,500 all went on their credit card.
Bailey, Kim and their son, Will, loved camping, and they had all been perfectly happy with the trip they were planning. I asked them how they had ended up at a resort, shelling out tons of money for boat rentals, stand-up paddleboards and dining out. They looked at each other and Bailey finally said, “We saw all these photos of our friends and their families on these amazing family vacations. Disneyland, cottages, even Mexico! I didn’t realize how exciting other people’s family vacations were until we were scrolling through my news feed, and I felt like, Jeez, we are bad parents.”
And there it was—we didn’t know, but now we do, and we’re not good enough—all thanks to social media. I knew that Will was happy, well-fed, loved and healthy. All the signs of good parenting were present, and yet they had felt tremendous guilt about their lack of an annual family blowout, as if they were depriving their child of a basic necessity.
Fifteen years ago, if Kim and Bailey had wanted to see photos of their friends’ amazing vacation, they would have had to physically go to their homes and demand a three-hour slide show complete with shots of hotels, water slides and fabulous meals. And 15 years ago it would have been a one-time slide show. They would have had no access to those photos once the evening was over (unless they asked for copies, which would have been creepy).
But fast-forward those 15 years and Bailey now follows 328 people on social media. She figures that about 50 percent are parents in a similar socioeconomic bracket. These are her people, her Joneses, the ones against whom she measures her Life Checklist status. A quick scroll through her news feed while brushing her teeth in the morning lets her see March Break vacation photos for 20-plus families. The Turners are skiing, the Singhs are in Cuba, and—oh, look!—the Yees are riding horses.
Bailey didn’t have to go to someone’s house to see those photos; she didn’t even have to ask to see them. They were just there, in her face. Making her painfully aware of how unexciting her own family vacation plans felt. And all before her morning coffee.
Post by post, social media were stoking the fire under Bailey’s fear that she wasn’t good enough, that her financial inadequacy was depriving Will of the kind of experiences his peers were enjoying. Which paved the way for that trip to a resort becoming a need rather than a want.
That’s how social media change our perceptions, making daily life more expensive. Simple things like having a few friends over becomes a $40 evening instead of a $15 one. And a Life Checklist goal of travel with the family ends up costing $4,500 instead of $1,000. It took Bailey and Kim eight months to recover from that unexpected credit card debt. For others, the financial impact of the social media parade can last much longer.
Social Media Detox = Financial Lifesaver
Meet Lulu, another client who suffered from overspending heightened by the pressure of social media. When she came to see me, Lulu had $7,000 in credit card debt, all of which had accumulated in the past year. Month by month, swipe by swipe, F*ck-It Moment after F*ck-It Moment, the balance continued to climb.
Lulu admitted that she liked online shopping and subscribed to email bulletins from all her favourite stores. Her credit card info is saved on most of their sites to make purchasing easy. A little too easy. “It’s never anything huge,” she said. “Just little things here and there.”
Her last purchase was a rug for her apartment. “It’s hard to resist when I see all these beautiful products from my favourite stores on my friends’ social media feeds. Somehow it makes me feel like I’m failing at life. Or maybe we all just have debt? I don’t know.”
I asked her when she does most of her online shopping. “I’m a sucker for a sale,” she said.
After a little more digging, I knew a major source of her financial woes was social media. “I think social media are affecting your finances in a bad way,” I told her. “I’d like you to try a social media detox and see if that helps break the cycle of overspending.”
She stared at me a moment and finally said, “What do I have to do exactly?”
I explained the rules:
• Two weeks fully off social media. No cheating.
• Unsubscribing from all her favourite retailers that currently sent notifications to her inbox.
• Deleting her credit card information from all apps and online stores.
“The goal,” I told her, “is to see if the urge to spend goes down over the next two weeks. And if you do have an urge to spend, hopefully you’ll have made the process more difficult.”
She was definitely skeptical and not looking forward to it, but she agreed to give the detox a try.
After two weeks, we had a meeting to check in. Here’s what she reported: “Being totally off social media for two weeks was painful at first. I was so angry at you for the first four days, and I cheated a few times. But I finally realized I was actually addicted to it, around the same time that I realized I didn’t feel as down about my circumstances anymore. That was really interesting.
“And then I almost bought a new bathing suit online, but since my credit card info wasn’t in the store’s checkout data, I didn’t end up purchasing it. My wallet was in another room and I was sitting in front of the laptop and TV, being like, Oh great, now I have to get up from my cozy spot and get my credit card. I realized I didn’t want to be bothered, which is so lazy!” She laughed. “I took that as a sign that I didn’t really want the bathing suit, you know? So I shut the site and decided that if I still wanted it the next day, I’d buy it then. But I didn’t.”
“Did you notice that your urges to buy decreased?” I asked.
“Not while I was on the detox, but once I logged back on I immediately noticed that I had urges. I was back on Temptation Island with all these beautiful products constantly in front of me.”
“Can you be more specific?” I asked.
“Well, I follow two lifestyle bloggers and now I’m so much more aware of how they impact me. I’ve also noticed that a few of my friends are actually triggers that make me feel like crap. Maybe I’m a bit jealous? Not in a ‘mean girls,’ catty kind of way. It’s just that they have really nice lives and I guess I compare myself to them a lot. I never thought about that before the detox. But they are my friends, so what can I do about it? I’m not going to unfollow them.”
Totally fair. The people we compare ourselves to the most, our Joneses, are often our closest friends, relatives and peers. Since staying off social media forever is not an option for most of us, we have to learn to use it responsibly.
So what can you do to avoid falling prey to social media spending pressure? A different kind of checklist can help:
• Unsubscribe from the email newsletters of your favourite stores. Ignorance is bliss when it comes to sales.
• Unfollow any lifestyle brands or retailers that trigger you to overspend.
• Unfollow people (except your friends, obviously) who trigger your sense of inadequacy, such as people from high school whose unbelievable success makes you feel like crap.
• Don’t use social media until you’ve been awake for an hour and have had some caffeine or whatever you use to wake yourself up.
• Shut off all social media one hour before going to bed.
• Use a timer. If you’re about to deep-dive into social media, that’s okay! Set the timer for 15 minutes. That way you’ll be aware of how much time you’re spending mindlessly scrolling.
Lulu and I added a financial plan to the social media detox to keep her from slipping back into overspending habits. I met with her six months later to follow up.
“I’ve been killing it,” she said.
I leaned forward. “Tell me everything.”
“I followed all your rules, and I can honestly say that I have fewer urges to spend and I feel better about my financial life. Actually, though, I think my awareness of special sales was a huge issue. Like you said, I’m blissfully ignorant now and I don’t feel as sorry for myself because I can’t afford the things I see on sale. And making it harder for me to buy online was key. It really alerted me to how mindlessly I was spending money before, just because it was way too easy. I deleted my automatic taxi and food delivery accounts from my phone too. That made a huge difference.”
“And how’s the debt repayment going?”
She beamed. “I’ve paid off $3,000 and haven’t had a single shopping binge. I’ve bought stuff, for sure, but nothing that I regret or that was purchased because I was having a low moment.”
“This is wonderful news!”
“I thought your whole social media detox was a bit over the top when I was here before, but honestly, being off it and being more mindful of what it’s doing to me have been total game-changers. I feel that I can log in now and recognize when I’m under the Inadequacy Influence and when I’m not. I control it, not the other way around. Plus I know in advance that I need to brace myself when I’m about to look at some of my friends’ profiles, because they are triggers for me.”
“Amazing!” I said, and we hugged it out.
The combination of comparing herself to others on social media and the ease of online shopping had become a financial nightmare for Lulu. And no wonder! Spending money online is so streamlined it’s almost effortless. Click, click, done. Add in free shipping and it feels like the perfect pick-me-up when you’re having a weak, fearful or emotionally charged moment.
A social media detox can get you out from under the Inadequacy Influence by helping you gain perspective and recognize your spending triggers. Following that up by deleting your credit card information from your favourite online stores makes it harder to spend money, ensuring that every purchase is made mindfully. But to keep the Influence under wraps for good, you have to curb the all-too-human need to compare yourself to others—something that is easier said than done.
Social media are a fun but powerful way for us to compare ourselves to others. You need to be mindful of the ways in which the cost of your lifestyle expectations may be creeping up, as well as the effect that social media are having on your overall sense of inadequacy. The more often you have to say no to spending and the more aware you are of what other people have, the more deprived, broke and inadequate you feel, making you more likely to overspend in order to keep up. Awareness of those feelings can help you gain perspective about what your triggers are and when they’re being pulled.
Taking a social media detox can help you break free from the Inadequacy Influence, but it’s not forever. Lessening your social media usage and using responsibly will help, but at the core, the ultimate key to controlling the Inadequacy Influence is twofold: (1) learning how to stop comparing yourself to others in person, online, at work and in the middle of the night, and (2) appreciating what you have. Once you stop comparing and start appreciating, you’ll not only feel better about yourself, you’ll also find that the pressure to overspend will reduce dramatically. Without that added pressure, F*ck-It Moments will find you less and less often. You’ll be able to stick to your financial plan without feeling deprived when you say no to overspending.