Fuck-it expense – how do you spend your time when you think the world is ending? Gen Z consumer behavior reflects human fragility and a generation of frustrated young people
What does Fuck-it-expense means for Korean Zoomers?
This typology of impulse, ‘treat-yourself’ purchases, can be described with the Korean slang expression “시발 비용” (shibal biyong), which can be translated as fuck-it-expense and refers to money spent out of feelings of anger and frustration.
While the existence of such an expression indicates that, at least on some level, frustration-based impulse purchases are becoming a social phenomenon among young people today, people using spending as a social and effective coping mechanism is nothing new. The use of so-called retail therapy as a means to deal with negative emotions in Gen Z and Millenials has an extra layer of human fragility to it when compared to the same phenomenon in older generations.
The Fuck-it-expense impact– socio-economic backgrounds
According to a 2023 study published in the American Journal of Sociology, Millennials are not uniformly financially worse off than Baby Boomers but face an increasing wealth disparity. This disparity impacts younger people who were sold the late twenty-century myth of meritocracy, to then reach adulthood in a world where people from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds are faced with scarce chances of actual social mobility. These low levels of mobility combined with a widening wealth gap have real-life consequences.
Gen Z consumers’ behavior and financial situation
Having lived through multiple recessions, a pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis, and several conflicts before turning thirty is not an experience many generations have gone through, but indeed, Gen Z is one of them.
Growing up and reaching adulthood in such an unstable socio-economic landscape makes this generation’s consumer behavior and financial situation radically different from their parents and grandparents, and it does that in ways that might not seem straightforward.
While it might be easy to look at Gen Z’s penchant for self-care and impulse purchases and label this generation as financially irresponsible, consumeristic, or childish, this behavior is the result of processes that started before this generation was even born and the consequences of which they are being impacted by, making many wonder if Gen Z is the ‘new’ Silent Generation.
Gen Z – a new ‘Silent Generation’?
Gen Z, the generation made up of people born between 1996 and 2010, is the largest generation on the planet, with Zoomers making up thirty-two percent of the global population.
There isn’t always strength in numbers, though, as this generation faces much bleak financial prospects compared to the previous ones. Millennials’ average portfolio worth in 2004 was $3,200, while Gen Zers’ average portfolio value at the same age in 2019 was $950. This generational wealth gap is exemplified by the fact that half of the U.S. wealth belongs to the Baby Boomer generation, born between 1946 and 1964.
While many Zoomers are well into their majority, factors such as wage stagnation and high cost of living are impacting this generation’s chances of acquiring real estate, which is widely considered one of the standard markers of adulthood.
Zoomers living through a ‘Silent Depression’
According to The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report OECD Employment Outlook 2023, despite an increase in nominal earnings in the first quarter of 2023, actual annual wage growth declined by three-point-eight percent on average in thirty of the thirty-four nations for which data was available.
This generation’s chances of acquiring real estate are also being impacted by the house price-to-income ratio. The OECD countries’ aggregate home price to income ratio stood at 123.7 percent in 2022. This indicates that, since 2015, the rise of house prices has exceeded the income growth by a twenty-four percent margin.
In this context, it is no surprise that many Zoomers feel like they are living through a ‘Silent Depression’, with the higher cost of living expenses impacting life quality in a way that is not reflected by the GDP. The parameter traditionally used to determine whether an economic contraction is taking place.
TikTok made me buy it – Internet culture reportage: Gen Z consumer behavior, online culture, and consumerism. The Fuck-it expense mis-behaviour
At first glance, the ramifications of this generation’s broader financial struggles don’t seem to reach Gen Z’s internet culture and content. A glance at any social media app will show that shop entertainment has thrived on these platforms, where a sizable chunk of the content users of this generation make and consume centers around goods and aims or ends up, on at least some level, to entice purchases.
With the internet’s love for multi-step skincare routines, OOTDs, aesthetics, and the inescapable duping culture, ‘TikTok made me buy it’, sponsored content, and Amazon storefronts, Gen Z internet culture can trick people into thinking that Gen Z is a financially stable generation with plenty of disposable income.
But the data paints a different picture. According to a Bank of America survey, fifty-six percent of GenZers do not have emergency funds sufficient to cover three months’ worth of costs, despite seventy-three percent having altered their spending habits in response to high inflation. However, a lot of this online illusion stands on this generation’s relationship and reliance on debt.
According to data from personal finance company Credit Karma, Generation Z’s credit card debt is increasing quicker than any previous generations. While this debt is not being spent on shopping sprees and international travels seen on our feeds but on expenses such as student and car loans, this reliance on debt also allows many Gen Z to afford the occasional unnecessary purchases that make their way to their social media accounts. There, it fuels a myth of generational as well as personal prosperity, a fable that many Zoomers navigating the treacherous waters of adulthood in late-stage capitalism compare themselves to and find themselves unable to live up to.
Gen Z consumer behavior and human fragility – ‘treat-yourself’ impulse purchases
From a Nielsen analysis of Gen Z consumer behavior, it emerged that impulse purchases consist chiefly of various kinds of sweet and savory treats such as cookies or chocolate. At the same time, Gen Zers also spend a sizable part of their funds on products for self-care and beauty.
‘Millennials and avocado toast’ caricature, economic inequality and fuck-it expense
According to research by the London-based think-tank Sutton Trust, compared to children of graduates, children of non-graduate parents are much less likely to grow up in two-parent and family-owned households. For many young people, these impulse purchases are not just a way to self-soothe but also enjoy at least a speck of the social mobility-borne financial stability many Baby Boomers have enjoyed as young adults and taken for granted.
Ironically, while economic inequality is the broader reason behind many of these fuck-it expense, the young working people struggling because of an even distribution of wealth are the ones bearing the brunt of the social scrutiny regarding spending habits and lack of financial savvy.
As exemplified in the once ever-present ‘Millenials and avocado toast’ caricature, the butt of the joke and focus of much discourse end up being the young and the low-incomes, their supposed vices and human fragility rather than the economic systems that keep many young people underpaid, struggling and frustrated.
Human fragility – How Internet culture and media at large influence Gen Z women and femme presenting into spending
While the impulse to use spending as a temporary fix against a potential future of financial uncertainties is felt by many Gen Zers, it is no coincidence that much of the goods-centered content we find online is targeted toward women.
Since before the dawn of social media, women and femme-presenting people have been encouraged to overspend on anything from clothing, make-up, diets, and cosmetics procedures to fit into rigid beauty standards, with overspending being painted as a necessary part of ‘womanhood’ or even glamorized.
This pressure to shop to fit is especially detrimental to working-class Gen Z women and femme-prepping people, for which trying to conform to beauty standards is unaffordable. This goes to show how systems of oppression often work in tandem, affecting marginalized people in multiple ways.
OECD
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organization with 38 member countries focusing on policies.
