Not Every Desire Is Mine

Consumption, Appearance, Money, Status, and Immediate Pleasure

We continue in Jiwasa — we together — with a delicate question:

did every desire that appears in me truly begin in me?

Sometimes we feel the urge to buy, appear, change something, prove our value, make money quickly, be more visible, more desired, more admired, or more similar to someone else. But before obeying that desire, we can open a small space of Metacognition:

where did this desire come from?

Did it come from the body?
Did it come from a real need?
Did it come from comparison?
Did it come from an advertisement?
Did it come from an influencer?
Did it come from an insecurity touched by the algorithm?
Did it come from the need to belong?

This question does not accuse. It gives freedom back.

Desire can also be induced

In BrainLatam2026 language, desire is not just an idea in the head. It passes through the body, the gaze, breathing, comparison, memory, fear of falling behind, and the need for belonging.

The market knows this.

That is why many platforms do not sell only products. They sell sensations:

“you will be more accepted.”
“you will be more beautiful.”
“you will be more desired.”
“you will be richer.”
“you will be more interesting.”
“you will be freer.”
“you will finally be someone.”

A 2023 study estimated that major social media platforms generated almost US$ 11 billion in annual advertising revenue from users under 18 in the United States, showing how the attention of children and adolescents also becomes economic value.

In our language:

when my desire becomes a market, my Tekoha becomes mining territory.

Desire enters through APUS and becomes Tekoha

APUS is body-territory: what we see, hear, touch, eat, consume, walk through, inhabit, and share.

Tekoha is what happens when that territory enters the body.

So, when we see thousands of images of success, beauty, money, romance, edited bodies, perfect lives, travel, clothing, cars, parties, skin, hair, homes, food, and status, that does not stay only outside. It enters.

It enters as comparison.
It enters as lack.
It enters as urgency.
It enters as wanting.
It enters as shame.
It enters as pressure.
It enters as the feeling of being late.

And then we may begin to desire not because we chose, but because we were placed inside an environment where everything says:

“you are not enough yet.”

This text will not say what the body should look like. We will not reinforce ideals of appearance. The question here is different:

who profits when we stop belonging to our own body?

Appearance without body criticism

Talking about appearance requires care.

The proposal is not to say that vanity is wrong. It is also not to judge those who enjoy clothing, hair, skincare, training, makeup, style, or aesthetics. The body can play, create, decorate itself, and express itself.

The problem begins when appearance stops being expression and becomes pressure.

When every photo becomes proof.
When every mirror becomes judgment.
When every comparison becomes shame.
When every detail becomes a flaw.
When the body becomes an endless project to deserve love.

Recent reviews show that social media use can be associated with body image concerns among adolescents and young adults, especially when social comparison and exposure to idealized images are involved. A 2023 systematic review analyzed 21 studies on social media, body image, and well-being among adolescents and young adults, reinforcing that impact depends on type of use, content, and individual vulnerabilities.

A 2025 meta-analysis also examined the association between online social comparison, body image concerns, and eating-related symptoms, showing that online comparison may be an important mechanism in this relationship.

The BrainLatam2026 reading is gentle:

we do not need to hate the mirror.
We need to notice when the mirror has been captured by the market.

Money, status, and the promise of belonging

Money is necessary. Stability matters. Wanting a better life is legitimate.

The problem begins when the system turns money into the total measure of human value.

Then the adolescent may begin to feel that they must earn early, appear early, win early, consume early, perform early, become rich early. The body enters urgency. Life becomes a race. Desire stops being a path and becomes a demand.

In many digital contents, status appears as belonging:

if I have this, I enter the group.
if I buy this, I am seen.
if I look like this, I am accepted.
if I earn this much, I have value.

Studies on influencers show that exposure to influencers can trigger social comparison, fear of missing out, and desire to imitate, favoring status consumption or conspicuous consumption in some contexts. A 2024 study, for example, found that exposure to influencers can trigger social comparison and FOMO, influencing the acquisition of conspicuous products.

Even when a study does not focus only on adolescents, it helps explain a social mechanism: desire can be mediated by comparison, imitation, belonging, and fear of exclusion.

In BrainLatam2026 language:

status is an artificial shortcut to belonging.
Jiwasa is real belonging.

Dopamine, reward, and salience

Here dopamine enters with care.

Dopamine is not simply “pleasure.” It is linked to salience, seeking, motivation, reward learning, and prediction error. A 2023 review on reward prediction error explains how dopaminergic signals participate in expectation updating and learning-related behaviors.

This helps us understand why immediate desire is so strong.

The body does not respond only to the product.
It responds to the promise.
It responds to possibility.
It responds to “maybe.”
It responds to “what if I am seen?”
It responds to “what if this solves my lack?”

The most powerful reward is often not the final pleasure. It is the search.

The full shopping cart.
The click.
The notification.
The discount.
The before-and-after.
The promise of transformation.
The feeling that after this, we will finally rest.

But many times, we do not rest.

Because the algorithm delivers another desire.

Zone 3 of desire

The Zone 3 of desire happens when the body can no longer distinguish choice from capture.

We buy without needing.
We compare without wanting to.
We scroll without noticing.
We seek approval without resting.
We feel lack without knowing what is missing.
We confuse impulse with identity.
We confuse consumption with belonging.
We confuse appearance with value.

It is not a moral failure.

It is a body trying to regulate lack, shame, anxiety, loneliness, comparison, or insecurity through fast rewards.

The problem is that fast reward may relieve for a short time, but it does not necessarily return elasticity. Sometimes it keeps the body stuck in the cycle:

desire → search → micro-reward → drop → new desire.

In BrainLatam2026 language:

when desire is captured, Tekoha enters a loop.

Metacognition: asking before obeying

The way out is not to repress every desire.

Desire is also life.
Desire moves.
Desire creates.
Desire brings us closer.
Desire can be joy, curiosity, and expression.

The question is to create a pause before obeying.

That pause is Metacognition.

Before buying, posting, comparing, changing, replying, consuming, or seeking approval, we can ask:

does this desire expand my internal space or shrink it?
was it born from joy or from shame?
do I want this, or do I want to be accepted because of it?
does this bring me closer to my body or farther away from it?
is this expression, or an attempt to fix a lack placed inside me?
who profits if I feel insufficient right now?

These questions do not forbid. They return authorship.

Fruition: desiring without losing ourselves

Fruition does not kill desire. It changes our relationship with it.

In Fruition, we can like a piece of clothing without believing we need it to have value.
We can care for appearance without turning the body into an enemy.
We can want money without reducing life to status.
We can use social media without handing over all of Tekoha.
We can admire someone without diminishing ourselves.
We can buy something without trying to buy belonging.

Fruition is when the body can feel:

I can want, but I do not need to abandon myself in order to have.

This sentence is central.

Small practices to recover our own desire

We can train small pauses of territory:

waiting a few minutes before buying impulsively,
saving an item and coming back later with calm,
asking whether the desire came from comparison,
noticing the body after seeing certain content,
following profiles that expand life instead of only producing lack,
reducing exposure to content that generates shame,
talking to someone before making a decision driven by anxiety,
doing something with the body before obeying the impulse: walking, drinking water, breathing, dancing, eating calmly, writing.

This is not about becoming “controlled” all the time.

It is about recovering elasticity.

EEG/NIRS/fNIRS window: how could we study desire, reward, and salience?

A BrainLatam study on Not Every Desire Is Mine could investigate how stimuli related to consumption, status, appearance, and social reward modulate attention, body, and decision-making.

With EEG/ERP, we could observe markers such as P300, LPP, N2, and RewP, depending on the task. These markers could help study attentional salience, inhibitory control, emotional processing, and responses to social or monetary reward. A 2024 study with adolescents examined Reward Positivity — RewP for social and monetary rewards, showing how neural reactivity to social reward may help explain differences in the relationship between social media use and momentary affect.

With NIRS/fNIRS, we could measure prefrontal hemodynamic activity during consumption choices, social comparison, reward anticipation, simulated purchase decisions, or metacognitive pauses. A 2024 fNIRS study investigated students aged 17 to 26 during the Iowa Gambling Task and found decision-making differences associated with smartphone addiction scores, showing how fNIRS can observe prefrontal cortex activity during risk and reward decisions.

With eye-tracking, we could see where the gaze goes: price, face, body, product, likes, comments, status promise. With HRV/RMSSD, GSR, respiration, and EMG, we could observe whether the body becomes more regulated or more captured in front of certain stimuli.

The experimental question would be:

when a desire appears, does it expand Fruition or narrow Tekoha?

Closing

Not every desire is mine.

Some desires are born from the living body.
Some are born from curiosity.
Some are born from the beauty of existing.
Some are born from encounter, creation, and joy.

But others are planted in us by comparison, advertising, fear of exclusion, the promise of status, and the manufactured feeling of insufficiency.

In Jiwasa — we together, the proposal is not to blame anyone for desiring. It is to recover the question.

Before obeying a desire, we can ask:

where did it come from?
what does it do to my body?
does it expand my APUS or narrow my Tekoha?
does it bring me closer to life or trap me in Zone 3?

To desire with Metacognition is not to hand the whole body over to the market.

When we recover the origin of desire, we also recover a piece of our internal territory.

Post-2021 References

Base document of the block: Bloco de Blogs Épico para Estudos Comportamentais — Neurociências Decolonial.

Raffoul, A., Ward, Z. J., Santoso, M., Kavanaugh, J. R., & Austin, S. B. (2023). Social media platforms generate billions of dollars in revenue from U.S. youth: Findings from a simulated revenue model. PLOS ONE.

Vincente-Benito, I., & Ramírez-Durán, M. del V. (2023). Influence of Social Media Use on Body Image and Well-Being Among Adolescents and Young Adults: A Systematic Review. Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services.

Bonfanti, R. C., et al. (2025). The association between social comparison in social media, body image concerns, and eating disorder symptoms: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Body Image.

Dinh, T. C. T., Wang, M., & Lee, Y. (2024). Social media influencers and followers’ conspicuous consumption: The mediation of social comparison, desire to mimic, materialism, and fear of missing out. Heliyon.

Deng, Y., Wang, Z., & Chen, X. (2023). Reward prediction error in learning-related behaviors. Frontiers in Neuroscience.

Politte-Corn, M., Pegg, S., Kujawa, A., et al. (2024). Neural Reactivity to Social Reward Moderates the Association Between Social Media Use and Momentary Positive Affect in Adolescents. Affective Science.

Liu, X., Tian, R., Bai, X., Liu, H., Li, T., Zhou, X., & Lei, Y. (2024). Exploring the Impact of Smartphone Addiction on Risk Decision-Making Behavior among College Students: An fNIRS Study Based on the Iowa Gambling Task. Frontiers in Psychiatry.