Nice post. Very interesting! I would like to add something to it.

The rise of the smartphone and the emergence of consumerism are more a result of our dependency relationship to material things and social appreciation, than vice versa. Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau already described this relationship in the eighteenth century, in his ‘A Discourse on Inequality’.

At the moment when people are forced to form social communities due to circumstances, is goes wrong. In order to survive, people, through the idea of private property, exclude others from the use of what would belong to him or her. There arises struggles for both tangible and intangible goods.

This creates a comparison culture. What do I have I compared to others? That question leads to both admiration and jealousy: the other has something I do not have. The struggle for ownership and appreciation is the result. In fact, you are therefore no longer free: because of the dependence on the other person's appreciation for what you have, you no longer have a complete handle on your own happiness.

In past centuries, material possessions and social appreciation have had different forms of expression. But the obsession with showing off what you have is not a new phenomenon. Like I mentioned before, the smartphone is rather a means that responds to the relationship we already have to things. We post on social media to gain prestige or appreciation from others. 'See me sitting at this beautiful place' or 'see me having a nice time here'. The more likes, the greater the rating. To maintain that, we must continue to feed the image that we create from ourselves.

According to Rousseau, at that moment it is no longer about the intrinsic value of the event itself, but the respect that we get from others. Shooting a nice Instagram picture or making a vlog does not happen because we like to do that, but because we aim for someone else's adoration.