Let me portray a scenario for you. A little girl, four years old, maybe five, is living her absolute best life. She has no worries about how she looks and what she wears, no pressure from her peers on any standpoint, the only thing she cares about in terms of appearance is how she looks in her long “princess” that she got from Mommy’s closet. She has two dollars in her piggy bank that she got from her parents for clearing the table and making her bed. She spends it on Ring-Pops and maybe a small stuffed animal, if she spends right. 

It’s a nice life, right? A nice way to portray youth, original, intelligent, and aware when it comes to consumption? Wouldn't it be amazing if all children in America learned from this concept?

Now, let me paint a different picture. The little girl goes to school, an incredible and exciting opportunity. She makes friends, plays, traces her letters and learns to read. Soon, she begins noticing that the other girls in her school are all wearing the same shirt. Why doesn’t she have one? What if her friends decide to not like her because she doesn’t have those clothes? What if she becomes isolated? How could she ever be happy? 

So she buys the shirt with the money that she has to beg her parents for. The little girl continues to grow until she is not little anymore. She continues to buy the same blouse as the other girls in her school, replacing it with all of her other clothes. Soon it’s not just the shirt, but skirts, jewelry, hair clips, jackets, bags, even water bottles. Her parents have grown tired of listening to her pleas for these things, so they give in and provide her with whatever expenses are necessary. She buys, more and more, always feeling like she’s playing catch-up with the newest trend, the next best fad, whatever it is that keeps her buying. Her friends see her purchasing those things and decide to do whatever they can to have it too. They think they like the newest style of clothing, the coolest new bathing suit, when they really may not at all. But if they are left out, their social life shatters. 

The American teenage stereotype has become a twisted, vicious cycle that our society has become simply too consumed and too greedy to break. No matter how innocent youth start out to be, they are doomed to fall into peer pressure, completely committed to materialism and loyal to the promise to consume as much as possible in order to gain acceptance from their peers. Parents have attempted to teach their children about good materialistic values, but each attempt ends in failure at the next sight of the “popular kids” wearing a new brand of clothing that they did not buy yet. 

This cycle has become so influential in the daily lives of American adolescence that it is affecting their behaviors, interests, and personalities. Their originalities have faded into the distinction between brands and companies. The little girl we once watched grow and live happily has lost her once unique personality and ability to even think for herself. All decisions that she makes are based on the opinions of her peers and the constant pressure to buy things. 

One can even go so far as to say that the media is to blame for this dangerous rise in consumerism. The daily lives of teens have become saturated with advertisements, brand popularity, and new standards that they feel they have to meet every day in order to keep up with every trend. Peer pressure is definitely something that has a big influence on the decisions of teenagers and young adults. But the rising popularity of social media has made a much bigger impact on this constant need to buy products. Social media not only advertises new products that claim to be the newest and most popular fad, but they portray people who have these products as happy and satisfied, as well as well-known and popular. This can definitely lead to misconceptions when it comes to telling the difference between a happy and healthy lifestyle and a life completely controlled by materialistic pressure. In turn, the teenagers that see these pictures and videos will buy the products, desperate to try to mimic the lives that they see on their screen. The result is an addiction to following fads and trends and spending dollar after dollar chasing after this impossible fantasy of having everything. 

If teenagers are not exposed to more realistic and healthy consumer values, this American stereotype cycle will spin faster and faster until every privileged teenager in the country transforms into unoriginal, consuming machines. Originality will become non-existent, personal interests and opinions on clothes, belongings, or even activities fading into the background of the biggest and best trend. That little girl will be the face of every youth in America, crawling towards acceptance, and losing themselves on the way.