I think I found the problem. Instagram put a gun to his head and made him eat out.
Too many people are unwillingly to accept responsibility for their decisions or are willing to to say "I screwed up."
Did you read the article? [He] has since tried to reduce the number of restaurants and related accounts that he follows.
I would also point out that the global advertising market is over $560B US. If it didn't work, people wouldn't be spending billions of dollars on it. It's a good thing that the BBC is willing to run a front page story on how social media affects your brain.
I think social media only has this effect on people who are stupid. Keep in mind I think probably 90% of the population is stupid.
A lot of my friends are pretty high income - much more so than me. (We're talking about mid-6 figures high income, some even in the high six-figures.) They never post on Instagram or FB, unless it's a very down-to-earth picture of a family gathering or a child's birthday or something.
Some of them are just frugal. Some of them spend lavishly but understand that it's not really meant to be plastered on social media.
By all means if you have a favourite thing or activity that you like (and that is expensive), feel free to share it on social media; I'm not saying that you can't. But I would have thought that it would be beyond obvious to anyone with half a brain that only poor people* share lifestyle experiences on social media for the attention. That humblebrag post, nice meal or business class flight - those are things poor people post about. Rich people don't post that shit because rich people don't want others to know how rich they are.
(*OK, poor people and rappers.)
I have a younger sibling who asked me the other day about Instagram and why people always post expensive shit on it. I told her, "It's because they're poor and they're trying to act rich. Rich people usually act poor because they don't give a shit and can get away with it." To my delight, my sister picked up the premise very quickly and now is as anti-marketing as I am.
(To clarify, I'm not anti-consumerism. If you like something expensive and you've thought about the purchase, by all means, buy it. And if you want to post about it, that's cool too. Just own it and don't humblebrag.)
I agree that the really wealthy don't flaunt on FB or IG. This is the classic "old money vs. new money" thing -- since time immemorial, old money has always thought that new money is completely gauche.
But I think your interpretation is extremely limited, based on your view of the world. You are defining "rational" as "economically efficient," and "stupid" as "using money in a way I disagree with." That's a pretty popular view here, where we consider ourselves rational and smarter than the average bear. But that view is limited. What if you start from the presumption that people
are largely rational, and that 90% of people are not stupid? That would mean that these people
are behaving rationally --
in the context of their own society and upbringing. But how could that be? It is spending money on short-term frivolity instead of long-term utility! Well, there are many, many cultures in which long-term utility is not the highest-and-best-use of funds. For example:
-- Generational poverty breeds a culture in which money comes and goes, getting out seems impossible, and in fact trying to save something usually means that it disappears before you can use it -- it gets stolen, or used for a bill, or whatever. In this world, power lies in your relationships with your family and friends, not in financial stability (which doesn't exist) -- "capital" is built in relationships, not finances. The culture is that when you have money, you spread it around, and when you fall on hard times, others will spend their money to help you. Therefore, money that comes in is immediately spent on things that seem frivolous to those of us who don't come from that culture -- things that are showy, unnecessarily, etc.
-- Or say you are a 22-year-old. Most 22-year-olds are interested in obtaining the best mates they can attract. So they spend money decorating themselves and their "nests" to make themselves appear desirable, and then they spread that image around as far as they can. This is exactly why 16-year-old boys used to buy the only cars they could afford and then work on them until they were faster, cooler, etc. -- sure, maybe you're not rich, but you can create the appearance of being rich and cool and all that. It's the human version of all of those animal/bird mating dances.
(Now imagine both of those combined in the same person and you have your average rapper.)
The reality is, most people want power and security. And that comes from two things: financial capital, or personal capital. For folks who are FI, we don't need to care about personal capital as much, because we have sufficient funds to cover whatever we have decided we need,
and we have also decided that we don't want other things that we would need more power/status to obtain. But folks who aren't FI, who don't prioritize long-term financial stability above all else, who want power to achieve some goal -- well, they need to get that another way. And that means caring about social status, because they both need their friends and family as a safety net AND want to attract the most high-status friends so they can move up the charts. So if that is what you value, then buying "stupid" stuff and flaunting it on IG is entirely rational; in fact, focusing your efforts on maximizing your exposure and obtaining the most followers is likely the most efficient, effective way of improving your social status.
You -- and I -- can choose to have different priorities. But it would be pretty egotistical to assume that our choices mean that we are "smart" and everyone else is "stupid." After all, if we were all trapped on a desert island, I suspect the people who valued learning how to influence others would fare a lot better.