It seems difficult to believe, but a survey released by Citizen Relations proved that 56% of the Canadian aged between 18 and 30 were living beyond their means because of the influence exerted by social networks. Indeed, if the access to internet is free, there will always be someone trying to sell you something behind your screen.
On social media, you have two ways to spend your money : you can spend it consciously or unconsciously.
On the one hand, let’s talk about the money you spend unconsciously. First, we should focus on the influencers : even if they look cool and friendly, they are the first link between you and a lot of brands. They are always featuring some products in their Snapchat stories, Instagram posts our in their YouTube videos. This is called a product placement. This is the first source of revenue for the influencers, who are paid by the brands to make you want these products, so that you buy it. Unconsciously, you spend your money in what the influencer you follow sold you.
Then, you also have the advertising on social media, which is divided by four types of ads.
First of all, you have the commercial advertising, that you find before watching a video on YouTube, in your Instagram feed, between your Snapchat stories, etc. These ads aim at selling you a product in an explicit way.
Then, you have the native advertising, that you can find in the press articles. The native advertising is an article about a product/brand written by journalists and published in the press (and digital press, on social media).
Further more, you have the brand content. It can look like a short movie on social networks. Actually, it’s a content realized and published by a brand but this content doesn’t aim at selling you a product or a service, it just aims at making you like the brand.
Finally, you have the target advertising, which uses the famous « cookies » on the websites : according to the online stores you visited and to the products you looked at, the ads you’ll see on your computer will try to sell you the kind of products you looked at previously.
All of these 4 kinds of ads are everywhere on social media and try to influence you to spend your money in the brands who are advertising.
On the other hand, let’s talk about the money you spend consciously on social networks. First, a lot of apps propose a « premium » version without ads, which is really more comfortable for its users. But to have this premium app, you have to pay. For example, Spotify proposes a 10€/month subscription to have an unlimited access to the songs and to delete the ads between them. There are dozens of apps to propos this kind of « premium » service. Then, you obviously have the online stores : the possibility to do your shopping at home, it looks incredible at first sight ! Actually, it’s a trap, because it’s so easy to buy things on internet that some people spend all their money on internet, they can’t stop doing impulse buys. Finally, you even have the possibility to « boost » your profiles on social networks. It means that you can pay to have more followers, more likes, more retweets and to become popular. That’s crazy, isn’t it ? But it’s true. Many people spend a lot money to « boost » their profile and to look cool, fresh and popular.
To conclude, we can say that social media are full of threats for your purse. You have to pay attention to it and try to not be influenced by all these marketing technics ! If you don’t, you’ll certainly lose all your money…
GUILLAUME
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