A recent survey by the National Retail Federation says that families will spend an average of $483 this year on back-to-school items for their kids.
Are you kidding me? Almost $500 just on back-to-school items? Here is yet another example of how marketing targets kids, training them to be excessive consumers.
If you think about it, buying all of one’s clothes in a concentrated time period doesn’t make much sense. Kids grow throughout the year -- they don’t just suddenly grow out of their clothes the first month before school begins. Most of the clothing being sold is seasonally-specific, in this case, for fall.
Parents may be saving money with the ever-alluring back-to-school sales, but not if their kids can still fit into the clothes they wore last year.
So, what’s the point of back-to-school shopping? It simply trains kids to be excessive consumers -- buying things they don’t really need simply because everyone else is doing it.
I remember those first days of school during elementary, middle and high school. Almost everyone wore their new clothes. It was like making a first impression to your peers, yet it was repeated every year. It’s superficiality at its peak -- kids judging each other based on their clothes.
It’s a sad day when kids anticipate the first day of school not for the education they’ll receive, but for the clothes they get to show off.
Indeed, back-to-school clothing and back-to-school shopping have become a cultural tradition among young students. A strange and disturbing one if you ask me.
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