Have you ever thought of how much control social media has over the way you spend money? Let us use a practical example. It is Friday. You have the last KES 4,000 in your bank account. You already have movie plans with your laptop and your duvet. Then you log on to Twitter before you leave the office and realize that your friends are hanging out at Brew Bistro. The temptation is too much! 4,000 will take you through the night, and you will figure out the rest of the weekend, broke of course. You wouldn’t want to miss out now, would you? So you join in. The influence might not be as direct, but social media does influence the way we spend our money in a big way.

For the lovers of gadgets, the temptation is undeniable. Say for example there is a new phone in the market. The reviews are good. Photos shared on Twitter are exceptionally clear. Suddenly you want it even though you hadn’t planned for it.

Product promoters have also found a new heaven on social media. The new technique of advertising and promoting products is more personal, more of a conversation. Therefore, everything is being shoved down your nose. Most companies are investing in getting themselves into social discussions online. Do not underestimate a salesman who knocks on your door, because that’s what these people are, and you could buy, even when you do not need it.

There is just too much information that is being passed to us through the timeline.  You discover products that you never knew existed. You had this? Social media tells you that you can do better with this instead. You love books? Social media shows you Amazon and the Kindle. It takes over the responsibility of informing you what you need, the lifestyle that you should be living, the cool phones etc. Everything is in there. The need for window shopping has already been replaced. By the time you decide to go buy something, you already know what you want and how much it costs. Sometimes, you do not even need to leave the house. The product is just a click away.

Friends on the other hand all over are telling you what they have been up to, what food they are cooking over lunch time, where they go for lunch, what book they just bought, the restaurant they just visited and how much you should try it sometime. They have pictures to prove, and pictures are always tempting.

Let’s not forget the collective mentality. There will always be the popular opinion about products and services. Having an Android phone might be considered ‘uncool’ and ‘poor’. The cool kids stand on the ‘iPhone’ side of life. Almost everyone wants to be ‘cool’. It matters a lot to some from which gadget you are tweeting. So what do you do? You strain your budget and get that iPhone just so you can appear cool.  You also want to hang out with the twitter cool kids. How they roll is not how you roll. But you will try fit in anyway. For you, going out means one of those downtown pubs, then taking a Matatu home because this is what you can manage to pay for. But when the ‘tweet-ups’ start taking place, because everyone is hanging out at the ‘other side of town’ , then taking a cab home thereafter, you will attempt to do it  like the rest.  Of course this mentality goes beyond just social media.

But all this of course narrows down to the impressionability of the individual. Putting your foot down and doing things because you want to, and not out of influence, is a possible thing. It might not be easy, but it is possible.

But before we start blaming social media for everything- the floods and the bad roads, do tell us: do you think that social media has changed the way you spend money? If so, in what ways?