“Do you really need another top? Why waste your money on more stuff you don’t need? Can’t you manage with what you’ve got?”
So the conversation sometimes goes with my daughter.
She’s a regular and usually happy teenager, enjoys school and being with her friends. Basically, she’s a nice kid, and she’s not particularly avaricious by some teenage standards either. But she does revel in spending her pocket money on clothes and the other random detritus of teenage-hood.
Looking on as an anxious father – and as someone who likes to think he’s got his consumer urges tamed – it’s a pleasure and a pain to watch. The mere act of shopping – as it does for so many people – somehow seems to give my daughter delight. Clearly, I like to see her happy. Which dad doesn’t want his daughter to be happy?
Yet I have a niggly-naggly worry that this apparent joy, however fleeting, may become a need in her as she matures. Surely, my daughter knows that shopping is not really fun and, worse, excessive consumerism is bad? Doesn’t she? I tell her enough…
But she is beholden to the Temple of Oxford Street – to where pilgrimage must be made, if parents can be duly persuaded.
“Dad, how about we go to London one weekend, to visit a museum or something?”
“Great idea,” say I.
And with such a sweet smile she’ll slyly suggest: “…and maybe we can take in a quick look around the shops afterwards?”
Kids know the strings to pull.
She and her friends speak of their trips to London with reverential excitement. What could be more meaningful and fulfilling than worshipping in the Chapel of Zara, or standing awestruck in the presence of the bejewelled Goddess Claire, her accessories all a-sparkle?
To be fair, my daughter doesn’t spend that much… It’s just that when she does she relishes it.
Maybe I’m just an old misery guts with a little too much exposure to the issues of sustainability? What harm can come of buying a couple of fashion tops – it’s not going to bring about a consumption-induced global armageddon. Well, not today, anyway.
Maybe, even, I’m in danger of being an un-fun dad? The anxieties of parental life.
And yet, as a society, we know consumption doesn’t really bring true happiness; it could even exacerbate the disquieting sense of needing more.
And we know we’re simply consuming too much. The UN tells us so. It’s bad for nature, with resource depletion. It’s bad for the environment during production, shipping and disposal. It is bad for the economy too – creating a debt-dragged shopper in OECD-land and, still, too often, an unfairly treated worker somewhere in a developing country.
Household expenditure has increased fourfold since the 60s. On what exactly? The money-attracting adventures of an advertisers’ imagination?
Take a look at the latest seasonal schmalz from John Lewis designed expressly to emotionally ensnare all members of the family to take yuletide joy in acquiring yet more stuff…
My daughter and her mates have been discussing this advert since its now-traditional, annual ‘media moment’, when it is released and Christmas in marketing terms ‘officially’ begins. Is it better or worse than last year’s? Is it better than Marks & Spencer’s ad?
I know the direct, rational plea for modest, mindful purchasing in the interests of sustainable consumption doesn’t work – for most adult consumers, let alone teenagers. We are 95% emotional beings; rationality barely gets a look in. Despite what we like to think… or not.
Stanford University’s Dr Fogg has a neat little behavioural model. We only change our behaviour when three things align in a moment of choice: a trigger, motivation and ability (as John Lewis’s ad agency knows all too well).
So, perhaps, instead of just ranting at my daughter, I need to try something a little different. I’ll need to let time be a factor too, of course – teenagers need to be teenagers. But appealing to her emotion, helping her feel differently about her fashion fixes – slowly, slowly – might just help her to think differently in the future too.
Because if we are going to fix our society’s wanton over-consumption, we need future adult consumers to behave differently than we do today.
Sustainability Education 
Thanks for the entertaining read, Steven. I feel your pain, having had three teenage daughters. Stay calm – our eldest, now in her twenties, is now a committed vegan and berates me for my occasional steak habit. So this could well be a passing fad and she’ll soon turn the tables on you.
I’d be interested to know your views on how we scale up Fogg’s model so that across teenagers as a whole there is either less motivation to consume, less ability, or fewer triggers.
There is also the “nudge” approach, espoused very convincingly by Toby Park in his talk to Workshop 3. Park is from the Behavioural Insights Team in the UK Cabinet Office. If you had asked me to come up with “intelligent ways” to bring about behavioural change so that people consumed in a more sustainable way, I would have made all the classic rationalist mistakes – appeals to reason (sounds like you’ve done this with your daughter), overload with information (ditto!), change the law, design an incentive scheme.
And all because this is what I thought it is what I would respond to. But Park showed me how I’m not rational, and nor are people generally. In the light of Park’s discussion, I can look back on decisions I have made and clearly see that these tools had played very little part in my own consumption decisions. I was reassured to learn from Park that I was not alone. Find some nudges for your daughter
If your lectures don’t work (and do they ever with children – did they with you when you were younger?), you could try reducing the ability to consume – cut her pocket money. I noticed a very different attitude to the value of money in our girls when they had earned it themselves. If a new top = four hours of late shift in a pub, then that begins to mean something. Alternatively you could tell her that you like her new top – she’ll soon return it unworn if you approve of it.
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Hi Steven and Andrew,
I enjoyed both the blog and the response. I am also in your corner, with a teenage daughter of 18, soon to turn 19 and already planning our (yes, she convinced me to join her!!) next shopping spree. One of her favourite past times is to surf the net and compare the latest brands. Life according to her: what is life if you can’t have a Michael Kors rose-gold watch…
I try to recall what influenced me when I was 18 years, so many years ago. Maybe rose-gold watches didn’t float my boat, but I was also impacted by what was on display in the shop windows (no internet surfing in those days). As I have grown older, I have come to realise that we really don’t need that much, in fact, I think we have way too much stuff. I am trying to actively change the way in which I take small decisions, which then add up, to lessen, to reduce and to rather have experiences than things. Sounds very “airy-fairy”, and often I fail dismally, but we try.
Andrew, I was also deeply fascinated with Tony Park’s presentation and the work being done by the Behavioural Insights Team. I valiantly tried to understand Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow, with references to Richard Thaler’s nudge theory. Great was my surprise to realise that all this talk about rationality and rational thinking is such a fallacy… Behavioural economics is just fascinating!! Obviously both Kahneman and Thaler must have some deep understanding, winning Nobel prizes and all. Something I plan to read up on and gain better insights.
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Loved the piece, Steven! Very clever, recognizable, personal, thought provoking and funny (laughed out loud when you I read about the pilgrimage to the temple of Oxford Street). My sister is 10 years younger than me and when she would come and see me in the city on weekends, I agreed to take her shopping on Saturdays if we could do outdoor activities and a museum on Sundays. Also a cool and interesting model by Dr. Fogg.
In addition to the sustainability issues related to consumerism, it is also very recognizable when you write about the other challenges – i.e. whether you are the un-fun dad. As a parent, you don’t want your kids to miss out compared to the friends or be the un-cool kid at school, but at the same time, you don’t want to encourage further consumerism or them help “setting the standard”, which could exclude other kids, or raise mass consumers.
Like Cathie, I also tried to think about what I was concerned about as a teen. I guess growing up in a fairly rural part of Norway, and without any internet shopping, it was more difficult to get new stuff – now it is everywhere instantly. One tip I recently read though was to think about every serious purchase for more than a week – i.e. when you see something, put it on hold for a week and see if you still want is just as much, and hence limiting the impulsive buying (encouraged by infernal events such as the upcoming Black Friday) :S
When I really want something, I also keep in mind the quote by Marcel Proust: “Desire makes everything blossom; possession makes everything wither and fade” – too often I find the idea and planning of getting something more exciting of actually getting it.
PS – Cathie: if you like behavioural economics, Gary Becker has some excellent stuff (i.e. the economics of the married man), and the Freakonomics books and podcasts are great 🙂
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Azure Planet, I am sure you are doing great job as a citizen of our planet and more importantly your family and daughter. I strongly believe that whilst being an ambassador of sustainability for the wider world is a noble aspiration, it really starts from people whose lives you touch daily, your family. Your values are absorbed by the generations to come in face of your daughter, her future family etc, etc. This is why I think it amazing you picked up this topic of consumer behaviour model change and your daughter’s teenage shopping spree. Let’s face it, you are not fighting her, you are fighting the society driven by power, sex and money. Shopping is only a flip side of it and the ability of corporates to exploit people’s insecurities in the face of real values scarcity. Without going into philosophical debate of darkness versus light, which will always be there, I think its partly generational thing. Young kids are attracted by all shiny and bright -coloured toys and you can hardly call them material soulless monsters. It is a rite of passage but with the right values, they hopefully come to realised what is real and what is not. (Mind you in the era of virtual reality that might be more difficult to distinguish). The bright side of the coin however is that this generation of kids, Millennials, are more likely to care about our planet, society and animals since they what devastating effect our overconsumption has had. Millennials are more likely to turn down a fancy job offer if the employer is socially and environmentally responsible. The study below, for instance , finds that over 80 percent of survey this generation volunteer (either weekly, monthly or once or twice a year). As a result of this involvement, millennials possess a strong desire to positively affect change. http://www.centerforgiving.org/Portals/0/2006%20Cone%20Millennial%20Cause%20Study.pdf
Not all is lost therefore and you are right, it is a lot about timing. Understanding why people make the choice they do, we can present a new argument for the behaviour in the new setting that we are currently in. Hopefully are up for the job to do this swiftly and least possible losses. On the functional level, the proverb – ‘we are not that rich to buy cheap things’ can have a whole new meaning for sustainability savvy consumer and generational shift too.
best,
Elena
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Hi Azure Planet,
Thank you so much for choosing this topic! I’ll be gladly responding as I feel it pretty much relates to me
Piper Jaffray Companies, an investment and asset management firm, has been producing annual report on spending trend, which I have been following. In their latest report, they have captured some interesting findings that I would like to share with you all 🙂
1. Interestingly, teenagers tend to spend most of their money on consumption – more precisely food. Over the last several years, teenagers are a group of people who have been spending a greater share of their money on food, and less on clothing.
2. Teenagers’ favourite website is Amazon, with 43% share of the market, compared to the runner-up like Nike, with 5% of the market.
3. Nike however remains the top clothing brand among teens across all income levels. Big names like Lululemon, Adidas, Forever 21, and H&M also rank among the most popular apparel brands. Top footwear brands that hit the chart include Nike, Vans, Adidas, Converse, and Steve Madden.
4. Adidas, however, is rapidly rising and gaining share among teens. It has raised up to No. 5 on the “favourite clothing brands” survey – climbing up from No. 10 last year. It also moved up one spot to No. 3 on the list of teenagers’ favourite footwear brands.
5. Patagonia has also had a sudden rise in popularity and for the first time ranked among teens’ top five athletic apparel brands.
6. Teenagers’ favourite social media platform is Snapchat (Surprise! Surprise!)
7. Teenagers are spending much more time watching Netflix than traditional cable TV.
8. An increasing number of teenagers prefer to shop online over department stores have been raising for the past 5 years.
What’s also interesting is that when looking back to the reports in the previous years, though most things slightly changed here and there – food has been what teenagers spend their money on the most. I guess it’s natural and universal rule that hunger triumph most things.
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I like your idea about helping your daughter feel different about her shopping habits. This is really a very important point. We are amazingly strong-willed emotional creatures as you say and it is quite incredible what we can achieve, do or not do, once we set our mind on something.
My decision to not eat gummy sweets containing gelatine (bones and connective tissue – yum!) is a good example. For many years after becoming a vegetarian I ignored this little fact as I just LOVED gummy sweets. Was never a chocolate fan, didn’t like cream or pastries and so forth so taking away gummy sweets just seemed too hard. Then one day about 7 years ago I watched a programme about how to make gelatine. They say TV is a waste of time but seriously, it can change you. I had tried very hard for all those years not to think about what gelatine really was but when faced with the reality by watching that one TV programme, it gave me all the strength I needed. I couldn’t really lie to myself anymore. I have never eaten another gelatine based sweet or product again. Cold turkey. Something inside me had shifted. A feeling had changed and that was that. Yes, I missed them for a while – but then they became a non-food product like meat had many years before. Then after that it wasn’t a feeling of missing out, choosing not to eat it bizarrely served to reinforce my conviction and it actually made me happy to NOT eat them. Lucky for me it turns out gelatine is not even needed to make sweets and there are all sorts of delicious vegan sweets around these days. Phew…!
The point is though it is important to think how we can use this ability we all have. We can talk ourselves into and out of anything and surely herein lies our greatest hope with changing the world. How do we flick this switch inside of people – wake them up so to speak – about the impacts of their actions?
I’ve started on my kids, who like your daughter just love lots of lovely new things. Only temporarily and then the new thing loses its sparkle and a new thing is needed to get all excited again. Like you, I love seeing them happy but at the same time this need to consume makes me want to weep and tear my hair out and I have to force myself to not be bah humbug about everything particularly when I’m tempted to get on my high horse about this stuff (often).
One thing has really worked… and I try to not overuse it. Instead of saying I don’t have money I speak to them about the truffala trees (http://seuss.wikia.com/wiki/Truffula_Tree). I move away from not wanting to spend money and scary doom talk about saving the planet and just ask them to stop and consider the thing they want in the context of chopping down a tree.
Is this thing worth chopping down a tree for? The wonderful imagery from the Lorax, so powerful in their little minds really makes them stop and think. I can see that this concept has worked better than any other in their little minds.
So both of the examples above make me think there is hope. We can flick switches. We can totally change, it is just a matter of a number of things connecting at the right time like your Fogg model.
So the real question is how do we create the perfect storm to flick lots of switches?
Or will we need to wait until a real storm, like nothing we have ever seen, comes along and creates the change we need to see in the world?
Do we need to hit rock bottom first?
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Hi Steven,
What an entertaining read. I love that you are thinking through different ways to help convince your daughter to change her consumption habits. Getting in the way of your daughter and her shopping must be quite the challenge! I’m wondering if there is an opportunity to inject sustainability into your daughter’s shopping experience? Perhaps you may get more traction this way. For instance, what if you encouraged her to carry reusable bags or a back pack while shopping to avoid collecting unnecessary plastic shopping bags? Or, what if you shared with her some of the cool work being done by clothing companies like Patagonia or some of the interesting rental clothing stores emerging like Rent the Rack? Another idea is to encourage her to donate some of her worn out clothing to shelters or even to return them to companies like H&M that reuse them as inputs in their production process? In exposing your daughter to some of the sustainability practices in fashion without standing in the way of her shopping, you may find she comes to the realization that consumption is at the real root of the problem on her own. All of this may even result in her becoming a more conscious and sustainable consumer!
Good luck and do let us all know how you fare with all this!
Best,
Katerina
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Hi.
Great blog!
Glad to see that I am not the only one at the mercy of teenage daughters. I have two. They are quite expensive, and they are seasoned shoppers, and have mastered manipulation of their Daddy and his wallet. Mine too, do consume and purchase their share of unnecessary items. But I am much less worried about their impact on the world.
Spending habits aside, teenagers, at least those in the circle of friends my kids travel with, are spectacularly more aware, from a sustainability perspective, than the circle of adults in my world (my MSt colleagues aside, of course). Yes, they have their wants, and I want to satisfy them within reason, but to hear them speak about equality, about LGBT issues, about electric cars, about carbon, about poverty, gives me great hope. It means that these issues are rightfully becoming mainstream concerns of that generation.
I want my kids to think big picture. It’s okay to buy the shiny new things. Shiny things are fun, and provide some instant gratification or reward for hard work or for celebration. But be aware. The big decisions are the important ones.
I believe that new generation is going to be awesome. If they never achieve awesome, they will still be way better than my generation, or the ones before.
It’s our generation that needs fixing.
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My children are a little younger, my son is what’s called a pre-teen, a signal that perhaps the next generation must be evolving quicker, becoming teenage pretenders at 11 years old. Anyway I will start by saying that I share your sentiments and recognise the difficulties in having these type of conversations with our kids without coming across as a sort of kill-joy.
For boys who like sport, there’s an obsession with having the latest kit with the signatures of Messi or Pogba etc. That makes the kit special along with the sportswear brand. The craving is amped up to 11 when one of the gang gets the latest thing. The iPad has become a portal into SportsDirect and I’ve seen supposedly “new” ranges from the big stars where typically the latest innovation is around a sock part at the top of the boot, or a striking colour, or the signature by the star is now on the kit in illuminous pen. All very incremental but to children the kit looks entirely new. This year’s jersey now has an extra stripe and the last jersey falls into the bottom of the wardrobe. I can empathise with the mentality of children, and its no wonder they become distressed surrounded by peer pressure, targeted advertising on their e-tablets (which incidentally they are now required to have in schools) and the constant hum of shopping in the area in which they live. It really is up to parents to be the counter-balance and to lead by example by not falling under the spell of the material world. In 2007 I got rid of our tv’s in an attempt to keep advertising out, now in 2017 its back in through the iPad.
Early one morning a couple of weeks ago I tuned into a radio station in Ireland that plays Gold, i.e. the kind of music known as Dad Rock and Dad Soul. However, the excited conversation between the presenters was about the new John Lewis ad, which apparently has become a seminal moment in the Christian calendar. I was amazed. First, having gotten rid of my TV ten years ago I’ve not been keeping up with the times. Second, this was Ireland, when did John Lewis become a thing in this country? It didn’t end there. YouTube recommended the new JL ad for me. This was tantamount to getting an unwanted crap new U2 record dumped into your iTunes account. So I had a gander. It was an ad about a cuddly monster under the bed set to music by Elbow, who’d rehashed a Beatles song which also served as the “innovation” for their own greatest hits record. Big deal. All derivative. Bring back the Snowman and Walking in the Air. But why were people talking about this like The Second Coming? Of course, later that day the kids asked if I’d seen the new JL ad.
Now we have Black Friday, which has suddenly made its way into the non-American world. It’s been cleverly shepherded into the culture as if it has always been there even though (like American Indians) we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving. But the retailers know how pervasive the media from one culture is and here’s another event to flog more stuff. Why couldn’t we have the day off beforehand though? to celebrate something magical like Douglas Adams Flying Spaghetti Monster. So we have the pre-Christmas Christmas along with the pre-Boxing Day Boxing Day sales. From Halloween to the end of January, a whole 3 months, we pray at the Temple of Mammon. Then for the rest of the year work to pay off the debts and prepare for the next running of the bulls. This is the world we’ve made. Stuff in stuff out, all incidental.
This is a lot to lay on young minds who just want to have fun and not be made fun of by having yesterday’s stuff. I know many parents who feel such guilt for working so hard and not spending time with their children that they buy them whatever they want to compensate. So we are back in the realm of John Lewis and feeding that monster under the bed who’s whispering in your child’s ear “go on click on the new Pogba tracksuit”.
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Hi Steven et al.,
What an enjoyable piece of writing. Well done. I’ve been taken notes from all of your experiences and put a reminder on it to re-surface in about 10 years from now when my daughter enters the teenage phase. I might have to pull it out earlier though – kids grow up really quickly these days.
I’m very excited to see that many of us seem to be fascinated by human behaviour and strategies to change it towards a more sustainable pattern.
Have any of you had a chance to see the BBC Horizon documentary “How we really make decisions?” It’s currently available on BBC Iplayer and obviously on youtube, as well.
I was flabbergasted learning how few of our behaviour is actually driven by what Kahnemann calls System 2, our rational-self. Most of our decisions are being made for us by System 1, i.e. intuition. And yet, most sustainability initiatives spend much of their resources on trying to appeal to the Mr. Spok in us.
I’m wondering whether this really is the best approach to create the step-change in uptake of sustainable global systems required. Do we really need everyone to understand that Fairtrade & Organic coffee really is the best and that they should therefore make this conscious purchasing decision or could we focus on getting all coffee sustainable and don’t even give consumers a choice anymore?
Are there ways that we could learn from marketing agencies – who clearly have figured system 2 out rather well – to make sustainability aspirational and the thing everyone wants?
Because I don’t necesarilly think that consumerism in itself is a bad thing – it’s just the vessel we use to exchange goods and services and has worked rather well in this regard. The challenge I see is that these good & services have net-negative impacts on humanity’s ability to sustain ouselves on this planet.
If the clothing offered at the Temple of Oxford Street were designed in such a way that it contributes to repleneshing natural & social resoures consumerism might actually be a force for good.
Again, thanks for your thought-provoking post and thanks for the parenting advice – I’ll keep it close. Just in case…
Andre
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