“Online, only the positives are shown. What’s more, if the app picks up, you are interested in a certain brand, and all your content revolves around it, creating the illusion that this sort of content is the norm,” says Tan in an interview with The Edge Singapore.
The constant stream of idealised life-styles on social media makes young consumers anxious and compels them to overspend. This traps them in a cycle of poor financial decisions and distorted financial reality.
“I empathise with the young, they’re under a lot of pressure,” says Alvin Tan, financial services director at PhillipCapital, as he describes a growing phenomenon of “money dysmorphia” or money disorder, which describes insecurity about one’s financial situation, even if it is stable.
