Money VS Teen

“I’ll only ever be satisfied once I’m rich enough to afford a luxury car for every day of the week,” said a close friend of mine over coffee one day. This, in my opinion ridiculous, comment was made to me the other day by a friend of mine, which really stuck with me when thinking about previous generations compared to my current one in terms of money. The youth culture of the 1960’s, and mainly the hippie culture, was mainly focused on ditching the previous generation’s conservative ways for a more open-minded, and love and happiness focused society. One thing that the youth of the 1960’s had a particular opinion on was money. The youth of that time period didn’t focus on money, and viewed it solely as something to help them meet their basic needs like food and water. Anything more was just not necessary, and the hippie movement was really trying to divert people’s attention from money to what they felt were more important things. According to this article, typically these people came from families that were not necessarily living in poverty, but rather that had a decent amount of money and could afford a few luxuries. They were completely ditching this lifestyle and swapping it for poverty. Some people did this in order to explore themselves and the world around them more, without getting caught up in the money race. In "Just Kids", Patti and Robert work for money just for basic survival and for art supplies. They do not desire anything materialistic, and care only about meeting rent and being able to create. As stated here, we see that hippies and youth of the 1960's chose clothing that was handmade or purchased in flea markets as a way to take a stand against common American consumerism and materialism. However, this was quite different than how a lot of youth today view money. Jean Twenge, the author of a book titled "Generation Me", says here: “Compared to previous generations, recent high school graduates are more likely to want lots of money and nice things, but less likely to say they’re willing to work hard to earn them”. A common stereotype of the youth of today is that they are very materialistic and money-oriented. However, there might actually be a reason for this. Researchers on the topic, Jean Twenge and Tim Kasser state that adolescents’ materialism was highest when advertising spending made up a high percentage of US economy, which could suggest that advertising has a great effect on the materialism of youth today. This would make sense when contrasting our society to that of the 1960’s, when advertising was not nearly as widespread as today. From personal experience as a young person today and through my peers, I would certainly say that many of us value money. Recently, with university right around the corner, I often hear people talking about how they are choosing a university program based on what types of salaries they’ll receive once graduating. Many people that I know and that I’ve spoken to are in school primarily because they want a big salary later on, not because they want to learn about a particular topic or field. All in all, I certainly believe that youth today is more focused on money than the youth of previous generations, especially that of the 1960’s. 

Hippies shown here barefoot wearing rugged clothing, clearly not focused on materialism and expensive clothing.