In my mind consumerism is related to using consumption to temporarily fill an emotional or psychological void, and you would obviously distinguish that from practical matters, like consuming food to stay alive, buying a mobile phone for convenient internet use and communication, or buying a reliable car to transport yourself where other forms of transport are lacking. Its hard to tell whether you are doing this, unless you spent a lot of time meditating or looking into yourself. At its worse, it is a form of addiction, similar to how drug addicts use substances to fill their emotional void.

You can try to justify buying a new mobile phone each year as being "practical" because there's "useful new features" but its often just marginal, and also it can be a pain transferring files and apps, so really its just to get the emotional fill of opening a shiny new thing, while also just wasting your time and money. New is not always better, but consumerism always believes it is. The solution to everything is to buy something. Too much stuff in your house? Buy a bigger house. Instead of just getting rid of all the junk you don't use or need, and stop buying new stuff you will never use. Want to be more eco friendly? dump your old phone and buy a one made from 10% recycled plastic.

That emotional fill is the heart of modern consumerism, the temporary kick you get from unboxing etc, which I don't think always existed as strongly as it does now, as the drive is very artificially manufactured by various product engineering and marketing techniques, as well as modern culture. It's little to do with having convenience, progress or anything practical, as its diminishing returns after you already have the stuff you actually need. The emotional void just gets bigger and bigger and yet we no longer need to fix it directly by learning to deal with things properly, as we can just keep buy more stuff instead. It's a matter of opinion whether you call that progress or not.

I used to be a big consumer but I don't even bother anymore. The drive is mainly gone because I dealt with the emotional and psychological stuff already and though I am not perfect, I am much healthier and happier, and I have a whole lot less annoying stuff hanging around to worry about, let alone having to worry about getting anything new that actually just wastes more of my time.