In the past year, pandemic times called for hours on hours of mindlessly scrolling through short-lived pieces of social media to stay connected with one another. Just about every teenager in the US (myself included!) has seen the innumerable SHEIN or YESSTYLE hauls captured in ten-second TikToks and Instagram Reels. Tennis skirts for only five dollars? Platform boots for just twenty? Cute, trendy, fashionable, and cheap, these products seem too good to be true – because they are. 

The affordable clothing options advertised by fast fashion brands appear oh-so-appealing to so many of us teenagers and our measly allowances. But don’t let the small price tags and catchy accompanying Tiktok sounds mislead you; the societal and environmental costs of buying into fast-fashion brands far exceed what we see through our phone screens. 

Many people already recognize that fast fashion is only made possible by the exploitation of workers in developing countries, yet we choose to ignore it because these workers are halfway across the world from us. However, according to a New York Times article released in 2019, the hugely popular Fashion Nova brand has been irresponsibly allowing commissioned factories to severely underpay their workers far, far below the minimum wage – right in the middle of Los Angeles! Perhaps for some of us though, Los Angeles might seem just as geographically distant as Bangladesh or Vietnam, so why even care that these people spill blood, sweat, and tears over our clothing? Out of sight, out of mind.

Say “I pretend I do not see it” all you want, but can you earnestly feel satisfied with turning a blind eye to this issue in Los Angeles, the heart and symbol of digital pop culture in America? A hotspot for modern internet influencers and creatives like Charli D’Amelio and Addison Rae, Los Angeles represents a new America – an America that should not be regressing to the criminal labor policies mirroring the brutal work conditions of the Industrial Revolution.

The costs to fast fashion aren’t just socioeconomic either. These brands are major contributors to our current climate crisis too. Guardian Science Correspondent Nicola Davis explains that the fashion industry, as a whole, is said to contribute “10% of global carbon dioxide emissions” and consumes, get this, “around 1.5 trillion liters of water annually!”

Hydration is practically the end-all-be-all to all our problems over the internet: the ambrosia that grants you a clear state of mind – and even clearer skin. Whether or not this portrayal is accurate, we can all agree that no one wants to be short on water just because of some cheap sweater off YESSTYLE you ended up only wearing once.

These statistics will only increase as social media becomes more and more globalized, further normalizing fast fashion. Just imagine all those trends from the past year... can you even remember each one throughout all the white noise that was 2020? 

The impacts of our obsession over keeping up with each of these trends have already manifested into a myriad of natural disasters we’ve seen across the world, from the vicious Australian bushfires of 2019 and 2020 to the more recent cold front in Texas. The rich CEOs that advertise these highly profitable fast-fashion brands to us teenagers are likely much older than us; they might never see the consequences of our irresponsible consumerism: species going extinct more and more frequently, cities being devoured by rising sea levels, children starving from increasingly abnormal crop seasons, and the list goes on and on and on. This outdated, Boomer-ish lack of foresight shouldn’t be further perpetuated by our generation. We can’t let down our subsequent generations as they have for us. 

But, what are some of the potential costs of disenfranchising these fast fashion brands? 

Professor Nipa Banerjee notes in an article that sweatshops can be the best employment option a family has in order to survive; other options will frequently still depend on the exploitation of underage workers, perhaps in even worse ways like child prostitution and abusive manual labor. 

However, realistically, idly waiting for change to happen is anything but productive. Promoting sustainable business models where workers could sufficiently provide for their families and products are created in an environmentally conscious way would bring far more progress to the world. More children could receive schooling because of the decreased need to work in sweatshops, thereby boosting underdeveloped countries’ economies and quality of life through a more educated population. Plus, sustainable clothing entering the mainstream market would mean more affordability for us too. In order to achieve this, we should gradually reduce our fast-fashion purchases and instead advocate for ethical brands, thus encouraging more companies around the world to follow more respectable practices.

As teenagers living in America, we should be purchasing from more sustainable brands and avoiding all the cheap fashion brands we see online. Such a clothing choice may seem trivial to some of us, but these small decisions could mean improving the lives of disadvantaged teenagers around the world whose environments and setbacks rob them of the privileges and opportunities that we have.

In order to lay the grounds for a collectively healthier and fairer society, we teenagers must make careful, responsible purchases instead of lackadaisically going with whatever some “local” posts in a fleeting TikTok haul. 

Ultimately, there is only so much we can do as consumers, much less as teenagers. However, indifference towards the pressing issue of fast fashion will have lasting implications on our world and society. We should always be mindful of the purchases we make and the clothes we wear. Next time you see a YESSTYLE haul with “Telepatia” playing in the background of a TikTok, maybe say “NOSTYLE” instead and swipe right past. Let’s not encourage any more unnecessary consumerism and instead opt for sustainability, humanity, and our planet.