Money Is Just a Paper

Did you know the total US teen spending represents 258.7 billion dollars? Yet, the Annual amount of money families spend on teens for food, apparel, personal-care items, and entertainment represents 157.6 Billion dollars. Well, I m not very surprise since nowadays, teens are more materialism than ever. Being materialism required a lot of capital since you need money to buy. That is to say, teens value more money now than, for example in 1960. One of the reasons why most of them give such a value to money is because there are constantly exposed to advertising, and promotions that forces them to buy. Advertising is everywhere mainly on the internet where teens pass most of their time. According to Greg Sterling, the Vice President of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association 95 percent of teens (12 – 17) use the internet, and 81 percent of them use social media sites. In 1960, teens were not submerged by advertising, so they did not have a lot of thing to bye. Most of them were spending their money only on music records, movies and magazines. On the other hand, a portion of teens today for example my sister, spend money on cellphones, clothes, jewelleries, makeups, electronics devices, video games etc…. as a result teens need more money today which forces them to value it more.

Hippy Protesting in the sate of Maine Usa

The hippy movement of the 1960 causes teens to do not value money as we do today due to their rejections of the society norms. They replaced the traditional American way of living by a more natural way of living that did not required a lot of money. They were living in groups which permitted them to share food and other essential needs. As a consequence of that, a percentage of teens in this era that was hippy or wanted to be hippy, did not give value to money. As an example, in Just Kids, Patti and Robert, influenced by this era and the hippy movement, needed money only for basic needs such as rent and art equipment. At a certain point, Robert wanted a chocolate bar, but they did not buy it since it this was not essential. Aditionally, during the 60s there were too many events going on around the world like the Viet Nam War, the black movement, rock and roll and lather on the death of Martin Luther King as well as John F. Kennedy. So, teens, mainly those who were aware and concerned about  these events did not have time to value monney because they were protesting and trying to change thye world.