Opinion Essay – Advertising and social media

Advertising has been part of our society since the XVII century, therefore it is not
something new. However, we are probably witnessing the gold era of marketing and
publicity. Some of the factors that may be influencing in the stroke of advertisement
are social media and globalization. But the question is: is publicity a way of meeting
our necessities or is publicity the one that creates them?

Nowadays it is impossible to separate advertising from social media. When you are
surfing the net, all around the web page are ads. In addition, scrolling down in your
Instagram, 3 out of 2 posts are ads of things that you may not even know what they
are. What it is more, if you have searched a specific product, like a bag, prepare
yourself for a bomb of stimulus. It is unfeasible to avoid them. Taking into account all
the points mentioned before, I believe it is more slavery than freedom. To be more
accurate, it is a false sense of freedom, you may think you are the one that can control
what you see, what you want but at the end, even when you are not looking for that
type of information it appears. It is a control illusion.

However, closing all the apps it is not a solution for me. From my point of view, it is all
about learning how marketing works. If you know what they want to achieve by using
one type of music or another, it will be easier to detect the effect they are causing in
you. This way, you will have more information to really make good choices. It is all
about having a critical thinking, reflecting on if you really need that or if they have
created a necessity in you.

All in all, developing a sense of criticism and teaching in schools how to use social
media responsibly could be good measures to tackle the problem of unconscious
manipulation. This way, we could still use social media and take advantage of all their
upsides, at the same time we reduce the downsides.