What sesame street teaches is how to watch sesame street. But if you can avoid using it in such a way, by all means do so. So, basically, you are blaming consumption on television. This is the same kind of attitudes that blame kids violence on Beavis and Butthead. The mechanism through which TV affects spending is by helping us form impressions of the kinds of lifestyles that others lead and that we ourselves would like to lead.
Research shows that people who watch lots of TV have large upward biases.
That is, misperceptions about how others live. They vastly over estimate the percentage of American homes with swimming pools, maids, tennis courts and the like. My research shows that increased exposure to TV, holding constant the large number of other variables, increases individuals 'annual spending. The explanation for large numbers of high income individuals reporting that they can not afford basic necessities, is that needs have come to be experienced in a social, rather than biological or absolute context. The upscaling of the new consumerism has led many higher income families to feel deprived and as though they can not make ends meet.