Online Shopping Is Now a Pandemic Pastime
We fill the time by browsing on the internet because we don’t know what to do with ourselves.
I’ll be honest: I was a shopaholic (no, seriously). When I lived in New York City, I would go into the Urban Outfitters’s sale section and scour for the best deals. I would do it when I was bored, needed a new scarf to get me through a chilly winter day, and even when I had breaks in between classes at NYU. Throughout the last nine months, I haven’t necessarily relied on online shopping to get me through the days, but it gave me and many other people something to look forward to in a period when not much was happening in our day to day lives. Almost every other day I would see a tweet like “what are we buying today” or “I’m going to shop because I’m sad.” Although there appears to be a social awakening in the U.S., we still clutch to the perils of what consumerism best provides us: instant gratification.
Financial experts warned consumers of comfort spending at the beginning of the pandemic. Ken Lin, the CEO of Credit Karma, told USA Today back in June that “stress spending gives a sense of control, a valuable feeling during an out-of-control experience like a pandemic.” Now that people are spending less and less time and money on entertainment and meals at restaurants, they have created more…
