Natoshia Whylie

06/21/20

Eng-1120

Modern Shopping

For many American, shopping is beneficial. Friends call friends to go to stores and it
can become a social activity. In this new generation of consuming, technology, clothes, and
other store goods are in high demand of the people. Shoppers belong to the consumption
system. It is costly and can become addicting. People end up buying useless gifts. Christmas
shopping has become a jungle. Shopping centers are a gathering for anxious people wanting
to spend money on things they saw on holiday ads. Advertising has played a role in our lives.
Like on the radio, you'll hear store ads to win a shopping spree. Our society on a market that
on a market that constantly promotes the latest product matched blow out sales and holiday
transactions. These ads oar around. There’s not much thinking in this time when making a
purchase. Shopping has taken over our lives and has created so much fear.

Especially in America there’s so much access to buying unnecessary things. There’s

not one Walmart in a city. There is so many different stores and so many new things
displayed for consumers. There are new products on the market. People see the new things
and buy what they see. This system allows consumers. Consumers do not know how we get
brainwashed to buy the newest merchandise without the desire of needing it. So why is that?
Why can’t we teach consumers that every new thing is not necessary? It is because the
market knows what consumers want. If consumers have money to spend, stores will do
anything to get consumers to spend. The idea is why the stores perennial sales, marked off
sales, and Black Friday. The biggest shopping event of the year. In the essay, Stuff is Not
Salvation by Anna Quindlen’s talks about shoppers become reckless. "They barge the way in
the stores just to get items” (Quindlen, 378). A person will jump out of their bodies to buy
things. At this point, shopping seems addictive.

Addiction itself if frightening. It controls your life. Speaking about shoppers in that
allure. Quindlen mentions, in her essay that “A person in the United States replaces a cell
phone every 16 months, not because the cell phone is old, but because it is oldish”
(Quindlen, 379). Shopping out of necessity is there is an issue. What is the point in buying
things when you don’t even need it? I feel as if you have the money to buy a new phone
when you have a phone that works perfectly fine, your concerns should be elsewhere. There
are many problems in this world. There is no doubt that buying goods without proving their
value will prove their value.

Telling people how to shop will cause more problems than good. That’s just how
things happen to work. There is such strong concern that shopping has become meaningless.
People buy the most expensive gifts, and no longer buy things with sentimental value.
Shopping also does help with stress relief to some degree. However, shopping impacts the
economic sales. Stores are able to stay open. People have jobs. Shopping has created
employment opportunities for many people. Quindlen mentions, “The drumbeat that
accompanied Black Friday this year was that the 10 numbers had to redeem us, that if
enough money was spent by shoppers it would indicate that things were not so bad after all”
(Quindlen, 379). Stores create a business. Consumers need business in order for things to
stay up a running. Shopping does have some positive benefits, such as providing jobs, but
shopping creates bad ethics and addiction.

In short, shopping has some benefits, such as work, economic growth and shopping
therapy. However, for the most part shopping has turned into buying meaningless things.
There’s not much thought put into why we are buying things after the consumer system
structure that has built it makes many people buy junk that is unnecessary buys. Many
people buying unnecessary things. Advertisements continue to constantly attract our
attention. That leads to wanting to buy more. Buying unnecessary things causes people lose
salvation while shopping. It is harmless buying something for yourself once in a while, but it
also has left people brainwashed into buying things that they don’t need. Just because things
are on sale takes away the value.
Works cited

Quindlen, Ana. “Stuff Is Not Salvation.” The Norton Reader, edited by Melissa A

Goldthwaite, Library of Congress , 207AD, pp. 208–21o.