3 . Shoppers around the world are crazy buying because of fears over the COVID-19(新型冠状病毒), which caused a critical epidemic(流行病)in China and even other countries at the beginning of 2020. People in countries such as England, Japan, Singapore and Australia have been emptying supermarket shelves of toilet paper, face masks, hand wash products and dried and canned food. Photos and videos of shoppers in Australia quarreling over the last pack of toilet roll in a supermarket have spread across social media swiftly.

However, governments have advised their citizens that there is no need to “panic buy“. They added that panic buying would only reduce the supply of products needed by patients and medical staff which could exacerbate the problems the COVID-19 virus is causing. Singapore’s prime minister comforted Singaporeans that: ”We have enough supplies. There’s no need to stock up.“ A week after the panic buying fever, things have calmed down and shoppers have gone back to purchasing items in normal quantities.

Psychologists say panic buying is an “unwise” behaviour that is part of a condition called FOMO the fear of missing out. Dr. Katharina Wittgens said a herd mentality(从众心理)sets in during disasters that causes people to copy the actions of others. People watch the news of items being bought in quantity and immediately rush out to the stores to do the same. She said people were taking on too much the risks of dying from the virus. She said: “Far more people die in car accidents or household accidents per year but we don’t panic about these things in the morning before we go to work.”

6 . Buying clothes for special events, hiding the price tickets and returning them to the store the next day has for years been the method of money-saving shoppers. Today people are doing it just for social media.

A survey conducted by the credit card company Barclaycard showed that nearly one in ten UK shoppers admits to buying clothing only to post photos on social media for likes. After the “outfit (装束) of the day” (OOTD) makes it online, they return it back to the store. According to Barclaycard, the “try before you buy” policy of online retailers (零售商) — where people pay for clothing they order online after they try it on at home — could be leading to this rising trend.

But the rise of social media means that everyone, not just superstars, expects to build and maintain a personal brand. Since we’re recording our lives and posting them online for public judgement, getting caught in the same outfits more than once should be avoided. And the cost of all those outfits of the day adds up, which makes returning a popular way.

There are brands that make clothes specially for social media shoppers, like Fashion Nova. “These are clothes made for social media: meant to be worn once, photographed and abandoned,” Allison P. Davis wrote in her report about the brand. Another favourite of the social media age is Rent the Runway, which lets customers rent designer clothing for a fee.

Some, however, are moving in the opposite direction. Groups promoting “work uniforms” have increased greatly in recent years, aiming to free women from “the trouble of clothing decisions”. The concept of the “capsule wardrobe (胶囊衣橱)”, which calls for purchasing a small number of high-quality pieces instead of lots of trendy throwaway clothes, is also making a comeback.

Environmentalists are getting more     1     (worry) about the effects of fast fashion on the environment. Fast fashion is the mass     2     (produce) of clothes at a low cost. They are put in shops and online quickly     3     (create) a high demand. Factories make 100 billion items of clothing every year. The fast fashion business model is having     4     bad effect on the environment. Many of the clothes end up in landfills and are not recycled. Another bad effect on the environment     5     (cause) by the chemicals used to make the clothes. These cause health problems for people     6     (work) in clothes factories. The way people buy clothes is adding to the problem of clothing waste. Many years ago, people went to stores and tried clothes     7    . People took more time and thought more     8     (careful) before they bought clothes. They also wore them for longer. Today, people order cheap clothes on the Internet and if they don’t like     9     (they), they throw them away. Every year in Europe, four million tons of clothing ends up in the trash, less than one percent of     10     is recycled.

9 . Social media is taking over our lives: Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and now, TikTok. These social media platforms have changed from a way to stay connected to an industry where even kids can make money off their posts. While this may seem like another opportunistic innovation, it’s really full of hidden false realities.

The median income (中位收入) recorded in the United States of America was about $63,000 in 2018. TikTokers can make anywhere from $50,000 to $150,000 for a TikTok brand partnership, and TikTokers with over a million followers can make up to $30,000 a month—$360,000 a year. They are making more than the average person trying to feed their family and keep a roof over their heads simply by posting a 15-second video.

This is mad in more ways than one. Not only is it an overpaid “job”, it promotes undeserved admiration from viewers and a false sense of reality. Many of these famous TikTokers are still teens and the effects of fame at such an early stage in life might cause issues later in life, such as mental illness. Teens between the ages of 13 and 17 make up 27% of TikTok viewers, who can be easily influenced by what they are watching. They can put a false sense of self-value into who they look up to and what they represent: money, fame, being considered conventionally attractive.

While TikTok has become a great tool for marketing, it’s important to understand how this content affects young viewers. If we’re constantly consuming content that shows us all we need to do to be successful is be conventionally attractive and post a 15-second video featuring a new dance, it will challenge our knowledge of what really makes someone successful and will in turn affect our individual work ethnics (伦理). What about the people who miss birthdays and family holidays due to their jobs and aren’t getting paid nearly as much as these TikTokers?

Richard Colyer, president and creator of Metaphor, Inc, had his own view on this issue. “It sounds great that kids can make money for doing the latest dance moves in a 15-second video, but we should feed the minds of kids and not just their bank accounts. TikTok can be great if used properly. Money alone is not good; technology alone is not good and connectedness can be bad if it is only online.”

Again, as a fellow consumer of TikTok, I do enjoy the app when I have some time to kill and need a good laugh. I’m not against someone making a living on entertainment, but what does getting famous by posting a 15-second video teach young people?

10 . Every festival has its own meaning. Labor Day, for example, celebrates the value of hard work. Thanksgiving is about showing thanks to people around you. And Valentines’ Day is a time when you express love to your loved ones. But somehow it now seems that all festivals we just care about one thing — shopping. And that can be a big problem.

“In a way, over-consumption (过度消费) is the mother of all our environmental problems,” Kalle Lasn once told CNN. Lasn is the organizer of Buy Nothing Day, a day set up in Canada in 1992 to fight against unhealthy spending habits, and has now become an international event. It’s held on the day, which is known as Black Friday — a famous shopping day in the US and Canada.

You can see the irony (讽刺) here.

Even though the idea of Buy Nothing Day was brought up 26 years ago, we seem to need it now more than ever. It’s just as Lasn said, all the different kinds of pollution in our lives today — bad air quality, the reduction of forest area, endangered animal species, and plastic bags found in the ocean — seem to be the same cause: over-consumption.

The latest example is the Singles’ Day shopping craze of Nov 11, which saw a new sales record. But as Nie Li, a campaigner at Greenpeace, told Reuters, “Record-setting over-consumption means record-setting waste.” And it was reported that last year the Singles’ Day packages left more than 160,000 tons of waste, including plastic and cardboard. The Collins Dictionary has also just named “single-use” its Word of the Year, pointing out the problem that there’re too many things we tow out after only using them once.

So, Buy Nothing Day might only be here for one day a year, but it’s not just to remind us to the a break from shopping on that day, but to change our lifestyle completely, focusing on fun “with people we care about” rather than wasting money on useless things.