JAG MAG FEATURE: Excerpt from a New Roads Junior Research Paper

Lucas Noe, ‘27, excerpt from Junior Research Paper, The Psychology of Status Signaling and Social Media Consumer Behaviour

Social media has played a major role in status signaling and conspicuous consumption, emphasizing visibility and rapidly increasing comparison. In this digital era, many consumers would rather shop on digital platforms because of how convenient it is, its ease of use, and how it essentially allows them to shop from anywhere at any time. Additionally, people can search through a multitude of products across platforms without ever having to physically visit a store. These factors are what play into a rapidly expanding digital e-commerce market, providing consumers with a much easier, more efficient buying experience. In this sense, consumers actually use social media to improve their shopping experiences. With this ease of shopping, it's very easy to fall into compulsive buying patterns. Compulsive buying can be described as the excessive or unnecessary purchase of products, usually because of a quick reaction to something or a feeling one has. Compulsive buyers usually prefer digital markets, as it's a hidden safe space to practice their purchasing habits without any external judgment. Materialism plays an important role in social comparison and status signaling for many obvious reasons, but also ones less surface-level than simply overconsumption. Many materialists are motivated to purchase products to signal to both themselves and others their status. Status is associated with wealth, power, and prestige. Although the motivator of materialist social consumption of luxury goods is largely around the sought-after perception of high status on its owners, goods can also communicate other information about their owners. Sometimes people really do appreciate the high-quality products and the designs of fancy luxury name brands. However, oftentimes, to contribute to one's self concept, consumerists use products that have brought out meaning in society to define them as a member of whatever status they mean to signal. Therefore, products can not only symbolize a consumer’s identity, but also their desired identity. Thorstein Veblen’s conspicuous consumption essentially laid out “the foundation for subsequent research on luxury consumption and identity construction” (Zhou 63). Because of how popular social media platforms are, a whole new category of conspicuous consumption is introduced: “online conspicuous consumption”. The main concepts that support reasons for the consumerism of luxury goods and status signaling include “Signaling Theory, Social Comparison Theory, and Status Anxiety” (Zhou 63). According to Xanxai Zhou, summarizing Djafarova and Trofimenko’s ideas around status signaling, “showing off luxury behaviour on Instagram conveys signals of taste and status through carefully designed content. And it relies on users' likes and comments to achieve social recognition” (63). Across digital atmospheres, the effects of conspicuous consumption and advertising ultimately feed off of each other, further boosting the selected brand’s power. The classic “Fear of Missing Out” is also shown to have played a key role in promoting online luxury display and consumption. The radical increase in visibility and hyperconnectivity has definitely shaken the consumerist atmosphere. With the extremely complex algorithms on social media apps today, it's easy to come face-to-face with ‘show-off luxury’ content. The algorithms push the highly engaging, high-status content, reeling in loads of views, likes, shares, and saves. These platforms and the users spreading the highlights profit greatly from this attention, and can receive copious amounts of money from luxury brands because of how effective the promotion techniques are. With users constantly exposed to wealth, luxury life, and status content, consumerism out of external validation skyrockets. Social media, in turn, doesn't just display consumerism or status signaling; it actually boosts it (Zhou 67). Connecting back to Thorstein Veblen’s concepts around consumerism, influencers on social media could easily be labeled as the modern-day leisure class. They monetize off the luxury lifestyles they curate, and have followers imitating them in an attempt for similar validation or to be a part of that status. Trends to buy designer goods or luxury services can spread rapidly on applications like Instagram and TikTok— to name a few— increasing the influence of eventual consumption. These influencers almost serve as the present-day ‘status signalers’ or ‘social models’, with people who subconsciously worship their edited lifestyles. These platforms have turned visibility up to a global scale. Comparisons used to be strictly local and very often based on one's community. Now, users can compare themselves with people they see on social media across the world. With global figures and visibility, people compare themselves to impossible standards. The exposure is a never-ending cycle that can create anxiety and fear of missing out on activities and a high life status (Trigg 110 and Zhou 66). The hyperconnectivity across platforms has boosted comparison unlike anything ever in history. The high-class lifestyle is an increasingly sought-after life, with many users becoming attached to the idea that they will one day be a part of such a life. Additionally, the ‘show-off luxury’ behaviour in the modern day has become more complex: 

“The 'show-off luxury' behavior in the era of social media is no longer merely a simple material display. Instead, it is a complex behavioral process in which individuals, through luxury consumption on highly visible, real-time, interactive, and algorithm-driven digital platforms, convey identity signals and deal with potential status anxiety” (Zhou 64). 

Veblen's theory helped depict a clear link between luxury consumption and social status, but social media has taken this logic to a whole new level. The visibility and the algorithm “multiply the effect of signal transmission, and at the same time significantly enhance the intensity and breadth of social comparison, thereby leading to the generalization of status anxiety” (Kuss & Griffiths 2017 as cited in Zhou 64). Social media platforms are designed to enhance visibility, and people’s attention serves as the money maker. Users end up constantly exposed to “more successful” or “higher-class” people’s lifestyles, ultimately intensifying social comparison. This leads to people supporting consumerism, even if subconsciously, to attain this sought-after identity. Most of these psychological occurrences happen without the user thinking twice about it. Even if one is already looking to avoid comparison but is still an active user, they will find it incredibly hard to do so. Social media platforms are designed for this sort of attention-grabbing consumerist acceleration. 

CITED WITHIN EXCERPT:

Trigg, A. B. (2001). Veblen, Bourdieu, and conspicuous consumption. Journal of Economic Issues, 35(1), 99–115. https://doi.org/10.1080/00213624.2001.11506342

Zhou, Y. (2025). The signal mechanism and status anxiety of social media “showing off luxury” behavior: An analytical perspective of behavioral economics. Journal of Psychology and Behavioral Studies, 1(2), 62–68. https://doi.org/10.26855/jpbs.2025.12.002