I thought that the phrase ‘keeping up with the Joneses’, signifying the attempt by some people to try and match the signifiers of wealth of their friends or neighbors, originated in some fictional account back in the distant past. But it turns out that it is based on real people

The phrase “keeping up with the Joneses” first appeared in 1850 in The New Yorker, describing how the neighbors of Elizabeth Schermerhorn Jones, a wealthy New York socialite, were so intimidated by her summer home in the Hudson Valley that many were prompted to renovate their own properties to, as the magazine put it, keep up with the Joneses. 

Since then, the idiom has found a home in the competitive arena of middle-class America. For years, “keeping up with the Joneses” has conjured up images of a typically white, straight American family — husband, wife, two kids, a dog — standing on their front lawn, waving to their neighbors, the husband smiling as he clocks the neighbor’s new car and the wife wondering if the neighbors’ kids are dressed better than their own. It’s a nod to the pressure that comes when your home, family and a few key material possessions are treated as vital parts of your public presentation.

And among this group who care deeply about their public presentation are those who are active on social media where status-signaling can take on a life of its own. This is especially truly of so-called ‘influencers’ whose signs of wealth play a significant role in getting followers, and they are going into debt to maintain that image.

New research shows that keeping with the digital Joneses, and making purchases based on pressures from social media, is driving a significant portion of young Americans into debt. 

“Minds on Money,” a new survey from Ally Financial of more than 1,000 U.S. adults, found that 40% of Gen Zers regularly take on debt for impulsive purchases of items or experiences they saw on social media. But social media isn’t just driving the purchase — it’s a key part of what comes next, with just as many Gen Zers saying that these purchases are made, in part, to be shared on social media. 

The article goes on to give examples of people who buy things even though they know they don’t need them and shouldn’t because they cannot afford it, simply to keep up (or so they think) with their social network community.

Juliette Haas, a 23-year-old wellness influencer living in New York and working in public relations, told me that, given her profession, “you’d think I’d be immune to social media manipulation.” Instead, she said, “I’m with the rest of my generation, adding peptide masks to my cart at midnight.”
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In terms of big-ticket pop cultural purchases, last summer’s white picket fence might’ve been a ticket to Charli XCX’s “Brat” tour; this year, it appears to be Beyoncé’s “Cowboy Carter” show. Depending on your audience (you might call this “community”), the digital version of a perfectly mowed lawn might be a staple wardrobe item, like Coach’s oversized “it” bag, or the best knockoff version you can find. Or at least one European vacation in the next year, because everybody you know is posting idyllic carousels of their week in Santorini.

But it is not just big ticket items. Even if they want to just stay at home and chill of an evening by reading a book or watching TV, people feel the pressure to go out to a bar or nightclub or something because they think that that is what makes for an interesting life and is what is seen as what others are doing thing, and they fear that they are missing out on life by not living it in the way they think that others do and documenting it. And yet, it doesn’t bring happiness, only debt.

It is one of the ironies that people who are really wealthy and known to be so can dress and act simply because they have nothing to prove. It is those who are unsure about how they are perceived or care excessively about it who succumb to this pressure. Naturally this has spawned suggestions on how to fake being rich.

“It makes perfect sense to me as a fantasy,” said Daniel Hakimi, a lawyer on Long Island who runs the Second Button, a website and Instagram account that gives advice on how to achieve the look of someone whose clothes are custom-made.

In all likelihood, this fascination has existed in some form ever since social groups began to be sorted by social rank and income. Yet it seems to have grown more intense at a time when unimaginable wealth is increasingly concentrated in a tiny and all-but-invisible population.

“As we get poorer, we are more obsessed with the aesthetics of wealth,” Mr. Hakimi, 35, said.

“The reality is, the authentically rich don’t shop to appear rich,” he added. “For those people, rich is not a costume.”

I dress shabbily, I drive an old car, and do not even own the small apartment that I live in. So what makes me feel that I am ‘rich’? Because I have enough income to satisfy my very simple needs and lifestyle and do not give a damn how other people live or what they have or their lifestyles or what they think of me. It is enormously freeing to not need other people to validate your life. It is not that I do not experience the pressure. One of the common questions that people ask me on a Friday is “So what are your plans for the weekend?”. Or on a Monday “So what did you do over the weekend?” My answer almost invariably is a cheerful “Nothing”. They may feel sorry for me but having a weekend that is free of any social obligations is for me a great pleasure.

I have seen this phenomenon play out in the Sri Lankan community, both back in the home country and among the expatriates, people who are determined to show off by buying bigger homes and more expensive cars and going on more expensive vacations than their peers. Back in Sri Lanka, long before social media allowed people to flaunt their lives and possessions, it spawned the metaphor of ‘naya’ (which translates from the Sinhala as ‘snake’), from a fable in which a character tells his neighbor about a snake that entered his house and then proceeds to describe the snake crawling around various things, using that as an excuse to list the expensive things in his house. As a result, whenever someone was suspected of trying to indirectly boast about some expensive possession, he might be responded to with ‘that’s a naya’. Of course, that was done by us cheeky adolescents to our peers, not by sober adults. But it was a way of putting in their place those who tried to act superior to us.