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Editorial
Ready, set -- take a deep breath before you start shopping
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
It may be more blessed to give than to receive, but if you’re addicted to buying those gifts, you may be headed for trouble.
German researchers have published a study finding that a small percentage of people are actually addicted to shopping.
They say 1 in 20 adults has “buying-shopping disorder” (BSD), which “is characterized by extreme preoccupations with and craving for buying/shopping and by irresistible and identity-seeking urges to possess consumer goods.”
“As e-commerce provides an important shopping environment, traditional BSD may migrate into the retail market,” the study states.
“The internet offers a vast variety of shopping information and simultaneous access to many online stores, thereby meeting expectations for immediate reward, emotional enhancement and identity gain.”
Perhaps “Amazonitis” should be a subset of the disorder, sometimes coupled with the influence of alcohol to create “drunk shopping.”
Meanwhile, the millennials among us are also having trouble with too much Christmas shopping.
If you have a “Secret Santa” at your workplace, you may know what we mean. Nearly 1 and 3 millennials want to see Secret Santa’s banned.
Jobsite found that 26% of millennials admitted to dipping into savings or overdrafting their accounts to fund an office gift. About 17% said they “felt judged” by their co-workers based on the gift they chose to contribute.
And, 78% of millennials felt they contributed “more than they should” to an office party gift compared to 58% of the rest of the workforce.
“If you’ve grown up in a world where social media is at your fingertips and those kinds of social judgments are being made fairly constantly, suddenly you’re even more aware of what others might be thinking,” said Dr. Ashley Weinberg, a psychology lecturer at the University of Salford in Manchester, England.
“Naturally, that’s going to spill over into all kinds of areas, particularly something that can be a social taboo when you think about maybe not giving, or maybe questioning why people are giving.”
Clearly, there’s room to sit back and think about holiday traditions, which are important and which we can forgo this year.