Consumer or Consumed?

Being in the consumer age has its perks. Anything you could ever want or need is right at your fingertips and within a short few days or hours could be delivered directly to your door. The shelves at stores are overflowing with options for food, drinks, snacks, mind-altering substances for every occasion like alcohol, tobacco, sugar, and caffeine. We are constantly bombarded by advertisements for the latest electronics, medications, and anything else big corporations can think to sell us.

What do the vast majority of these corporations have in common at the highest levels though? They don’t use their own products. I’ll give you a few startling examples;

• None of the executives at Phillip morris USA, one of the largest producers of cigarettes in the world, smoke. And they also have rules against their employees smoking at work. No smoke breaks at the largest cigarette company.
• The inventor of lunchables grandkids deem the product “junky” and “awful”. However they still operate the company.
• Bill Gates Rarely uses a cell phone and his children aren’t allowed more than a short time on screens everyday.
• The man who invented some of the most iconic flavors of Dr. Pepper is not a soda drinker. He says ” it’s not good for your teeth and the taste is terrible and overwhelming”
• The CEO of InBev, the company that owns Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, and many others. Doesn’t drink alcohol.
• The upper executive managment of most pharma companies don’t take or let their families take any of their products.

These are just a few examples. I won’t go into the “why” of why these people and companies won’t even take their own products, I think you can probably guess at most of them. But it makes you think, why would the CEO of Apple, not allow his kids to use his products? The simple answer here, studies have shown again and again that screens drastically reduce creativity and lower IQ in adolescents and children.

Think about all of the products you use on a daily basis. Do a little research into the company that owns or makes that product. You might be surprised to find out that most products are created entirely for the consumer.

Don’t get consumed by being a mindless consumer.

-Adam