It’s December – the most wonderful time of the year, right? The truth is, the holidays can be wonderful, as well as stressful, overwhelming, and sometimes disappointing. This can be especially true as your child reaches adolescence, where peer opinions take priority over family.
This is a time to be conscious about the messages you’re sending to your tween or teen about time and money. When consumerism takes center stage, which happens often in adolescence and is heavily promoted in our culture, it generally diminishes joy. But, by reclaiming the focus onto gratitude and connection, you can indeed have a wonderful time together.
In our society, children learn from parents, peers, and advertisements that what you own matters. By age 8, children have an understanding the role of material things in social status and believe they contribute to identity and happiness.
Indeed, humans have some deeply wired tendencies that lead to desire for new things.
In the first place, we have a codependent relationship with material objects, gaining utility and identity from them, as they also shape our actions, thoughts and behavior.
Material things also play a role in our social relationships, signaling what tribe we belong to, and what our status is.
And, new things briefly satisfy our innate desires for novelty and exploration.
The rapidly changing brains of adolescents, along with the intense focus on peers and identity building, heightens the desire for new things - particularly those with a brand name and status attached. Research indicates that the materialism of peers is even more influential in young people with low self-esteem.
Around the holidays, all of this reaches a fever pitch as capitalism pulls all these levers. Gifts are equated with love. Advertisements are everywhere, with heavy focus on the “latest and greatest” model of whatever they’re selling. Expectations are high, and conversations are constant among peers, highlighting the “must have” items of the season.
While all of this is understandable, the unfortunate flip side is that getting more stuff does NOT breed joy. In fact:
A focus on consumerism increases depression, anxiety and low self esteem in adolescents
Consumerism in childhood may even lead to decreased life satisfaction as adults
Tweens/teens who have a lot of things tend to value them less.
The bottom line is that materialism is related to low self-esteem. It is known that both adults and adolescents become more materialistic when their security or self-esteem is threatened. In families where toys and things are offered as a primary vehicle for feeling good, children learn that objects outside of themselves are necessary to bolster their joy and worth.
A better route to happiness during the holidays is to reframe them as a time to promote the experiences (such as connectedness, competence, and validation) and skills (such as mindfulness, self-regulation, empathy, and gratitude) that help kids feel satisfied all year-round.
