Have you ever questioned what you buy? Do you need it? The fast-paced modern world makes things outdated quickly, forcing people to buy new stuff without reasoning. Today people are more likely to consume unconsciously due to mass production and marketing features. Mass media, the marketing industry, and social media influencers make people believe that they need to buy more things than they need. Consumerism is a social and economic system that encourages people to purchase goods and services in more significant amounts. Increased consumerism is detrimental to the environment by the overproduction of disposable products. Moreover, consumerism negatively affects people’s well-being affecting their mental health. However, despite the moral and financial advisability of reducing consumerism, people cannot easily give up excessive consumption of goods. This essay argues that reducing consumerist behavior makes people happier due to a stress-free lifestyle, enhanced self-awareness, and an eco-friendly environment. What people purchase mostly is not essential for their survival. People go shopping for the sake of having the newest and most incredible things through following a consumer impulse or a momentary desire based on marketing manipulations. They work hard to earn more money, forgetting about their mental health. By reducing consumerism, people can decrease the daily amount of stress they receive. For example, a person can reduce the stress of choosing by having fewer choices while buying goods and services. Being in the decision-making process is stressful for some people as it requires thinking about various outcomes. Therefore, when a person consumes less, he or she has minor concerns about what to choose which further leads to a stress-free lifestyle. Moreover, higher consumption leads to competition among people about having particular products. Competitive consumption emerges from people’s desire to be a part of the specific social group with which individuals identify themselves (Gabriel and Tim 67). For example, launching a new version of the smartphone makes people desire to buy it, even though their current phone is functioning well. This is because a new phone is featured everywhere, and everyone is talking about it. Additionally, having a new model suggests a person’s financial status or can afford it. Thus, being accepted into a particular social group. Such competition and willingness to be accepted by a social group may cause stress for people. It is not easy to follow the trends of the technologically advanced world, which is constantly changing. Furthermore, having more working hours and considering people as your competitors causes daily stress and leads to anxiety and more serious psychological conditions. An individual with such a hard-working and competitive attitude cannot keep doing it for a more extended time because his or her life will not contain meaning and passion. Such a lifestyle will lead to depression that may end up with fatal outcomes. For example, in industrial countries like Japan, there is a term, Karoshi , for death due to overtime work (Kawashima 170). People work themselves to death and undermine their mental and physical health. They forget that their life