STUFF series on ABC take a good look at the vicious circle of consumerism – in particular our relationships with stuff and our dependancy on things we don’t need or can live without. This topic can’t be discussed without mentioning teenage culture and their relationships with stuff. It seems that teenagers’ available income is constantly rising (as is their spending) and feeding the multi-billion dollar ‘stuff-industry’ that continues to spin the wheel with its new products. This problem has been discussed, analysed and debated but is anything happening? When is the bubble going to burst?
The ‘teen machine’ just keeps planting its seeds and grows its deadly tentacles around the world, damaging the minds of ‘our children’ at the cost of others (see the lovely clip from Alvin & The Chipmunks - a perfect e.g. of exploitation of vulnerable beings for cold hard $$$).
Too right — and this really comes back to the question of why the pseudo-scientific category of “adolescence” was developed in the first place. Arguably, teenagers were invented to create a new market, in the same way that “tweenagers” are being created now.