Materialism has become an important concern for the researchers due to its impacts on the development of children and the youth culture. The working culture of dual income households has changed the process of consumer socialization of children from parents to media. Media makes alert about the new and innovative products available in market. This alertness of children or any individual is not a problem until children and the youth or any individual start connecting their happiness with worldly things which is a sign of materialism. Due to the changing culture of the society, parents have become busy in their career, which results in making children susceptible towards worldly things and dependent on media.

Parents, on the other hand, compensate their time by providing materialistic belongings to their children also the hectic schedule and the couch potato, the laziness culture has led the youths being inclined towards the approach too. Knowing this fact, marketers promote their products like chocolates, pizzas, motor bike, cars, laptop, and holiday tours as a prerequisite requirement for celebrating festivals and success.

For this purpose, they make use of channels related to children like cartoon network and nickelodeon. The message conveyed through these channels helps in portraying the image of advertised item as perfect. Children consider the message of advertisers true because of their incapability to understand the reality behind the advertisements. The youths today are always over phones, connecting with the peer groups and the following section are inclined towards newness. As a result of which, they start relating their happiness with the advertised item, which is a sign of materialism. Materialistic attitude impacts their interpersonal relations that ultimately results conflict between parent and child which also influence the children for impulse purchase which later on becomes a need for happiness. To overcome the effect of materialism, adequate consideration needs to be given by parents to deflect the attention of children from the media to the real world. Being a primary socialization agent, parents can inherent the values of relations in children and control the materialism. Therefore, parental guidance plays an active role in reducing the consequence of materialism among any children be it you are a child or have grown up.

By Subhechcha Ganguly