The pivotal years of adolescence are often something older generations reflect on with fondness. At the intersection of new freedoms and growing responsibilities, adolescence is the period of time in which a person forms their identity. However, in recent decades a shift has emerged in those precious coming of age years. Due to the rise of mass media and consumer capitalism — when companies alter consumer demand through mass marketing — young people are increasingly forming who they are not through a myriad of unique factors but through buying an identity.
The American Psychological Association conducted a study in the 1980s which revealed the purchasing power of kids and teens. Ever since, brands have shifted their advertising to appeal to this new consumer group. Enter the internet and a new type of mass advertising emerges. Psychologist Susan Linn, EdD, of the Harvard Medical School remarks: “In the new millennium, marketing executives are insinuating their brands into the fabric of children’s lives. They want — to use industry terms — ‘cradle to grave’ brand loyalty and to ‘own’ children.”
The actualisation of this cradle to grave strategy can be seen most recently in the internet phenomenon of Sephora kids. These pre-teen girls who ravage Sephora’s skincare isles in search of popular products originally designed for people twice their age are a deliberately cultivated symptom of consumer capitalism. At a developmental stage when anxieties about fitting in and identity formation are at their peak, adolescents often feel a necessity to assimilate with their peers by participating in trends — in this case yielding a cohort of retinol-infused 10 year olds.
“Manufacturers no longer sell products, they sell identities”
While kids and teens wanting to identify with their peers is not a new concept, their reliance on consumerism is. Understanding their vulnerabilities, companies berate children and teens with incessant media promising happiness and satisfaction contingent on material goods. Manufacturers no longer sell products, they sell identities. Child psychologist Allen Kanner argues: “The problem is that marketers manipulate that attraction, encouraging teens to use materialistic values to define who they are and aren’t. In doing that, marketers distort the organic process of developing an identity by hooking self-value to brands.”
Consequently, young people are bred to subscribe to mainstreamed consumption. Take, for example, the water bottle fad. If you know a certain girl has a Stanely cup, you most likely have an idea of her image: fresh set of almond acrylics, cosy Brandy Melville set, and decorative pink bows. She’s a clean girl. By solely knowing that someone possesses an object as mundane as a water bottle, we are able to extrapolate a person’s entire image by naming their aesthetic, thereby reducing their identity to a facet of their consumption. And while the Stanley cup and the aesthetic it implies might bring companionship with those who have adopted the same aesthetic, consumer capitalism and micro trends have made it so that this image is nothing more than just that: an image. The result is a shallow uniformity that leaves young people with negative self-esteem, increased anxiety, and constant insecurity.
Young women often bear the brunt of intense marketing because, as Linn remarks: “who you are includes how you fulfill your gender role.” In our generation, that no longer necessarily means proselytising young girls into domestic scenes through plastic Little Tikes kitchens but instead creating your perfect dark academia old money fall complete only with a Polo Ralph Lauren Flag Cotton Crewneck Jumper. The plethora of aesthetics, starter packs, and cores on social media — mostly aimed at women — promise an identity that is devoid of individuality. They act more as a subscription to a certain type of person than an outlet for self-expression. The extent of commercialised identities is so absolute that by simply wearing white linen pants and a blue top, one might run the risk of being told they look prepped for coastal granddaughter summer.
By compartmentalising young people, independent creativity is severely stifled. Compartmentalisation is nothing new either. The subcultures of past decades, based on music taste, clothing style, and beliefs, defined a person and characterised the youth culture of the time. But most of those movements were rooted in something concrete, like the skateboarding culture in Los Angeles or the New York punk scene. Additionally, most of these groups were created with the intention of subversion and rebellion against general society.
Today, media outlets co-opt and commodify sub cultures before they are fully formed, knowing buzzwords like core and aesthetic gain traction. Soon after, the inkling of a subculture is quickly commodified and commercialised. As a result, forms of self-expression such as fashion can no longer be used as a tool for cultural revolution, but instead fuel the very thing subcultures like the Hippies aimed to revolt against: capitalism.
“Virality and mass media treat adolescents as a capital, robbing them of the freedom to be authentic”
Virality and mass media treat adolescents as a capital, robbing them of the freedom to be authentic. Every young person should have the privilege of enduring messy self discovery, an awkward phase, to end up with a version of themselves they are satisfied will not end up in a landfill. When we build our identity around trends and they inevitably cycle out of fashion, what are we to do then? We are left floundering for a new purchasable identity, perpetually unsatisfied.
