Materialism and Media Usage: To study the role of media in increasing materialism among youths with special reference to social media exposure.

Abstract

Meticulous observations of the market across the planet reflect that Globalization of world markets
has resulted in high levels of materialism in many places. Notibly, social media amongst all media of
advertising has a very loud and apparent impact on youth. In the current situation where elders are
still holding on to with the television and banners, youth are exposing themselves to various social
media websites. Wherein they are exposed to ads and pop -ups every single time they are active on
one or the other social media website(s). These advertisements play a daunting role in influencing
youngsters for making a purchase and drag them towards materialism, which is expressed in the form
of initiating a purchase or creating arousal for purchase.
The study is focused on analysing the correlation between attitudes of youngsters towards
advertisements, level of materialism and attraction of celebrities shown in the vivid advertisement.
The study is conducted in Jalgaon region with the sample size of 174 students of the age group
ranging from 20-25 years. The relationship between all variables was tested. The quantitative
research method was adopted in this study, and a questionnaire was distributed through a google
sheet. The findings revealed that all the three variables viz. i)attitude towards advertising ii)
attraction to media celebrities and iii) materialism are positively correlated.