You can always tell that it’s time to get ready for college when social media is flooded with “must-have” packlists. Influencers on apps like Instagram and TikTok post videos of “Back-to-School Must-Haves for 2025” and “My College Dorm Essentials,” listing shiny new items ranging from clothes to dorm decorations to technology. Whatever they recommend, the message is always the same: these items made college life significantly easier/more fun/more interesting for them, and now they’re sharing their secrets with you. In case you’re unsure of where to get the recommended objects, the videos often conveniently include links to online stores like Shein, Temu or Amazon.
The creators of these videos get paid when people use the links and discount codes for their purchases. While the videos may be framed as helpful advice, they are ads like any other ad that we see on TV or on billboards. They’re designed to draw college students in and convince us that we need to have things we’ve never heard of before.
Karis Gremillion, a sophomore at Asbury, shared her frustration with this, saying, “The summer before my freshman year, I was bombarded with advertisements through social media trying to make me believe I lacked several crucial items for college … The excessive consumerism was like a nagging voice that kept repeating that I was always missing something.”
The consumerism encouraged by these ads is also harmful to people other than those who are led to buy things they don’t need. Some of the online stores advertised by content creators have come under fire for questionable treatment of their workers. Shein, a company known for churning out mass amounts of cheap items, has faced criticism for how it sources its products. In April 2025, a reporter for Le Monde newspaper named Harold Tibault visited some of Shein’s workshops in Guangzhou, China, and interviewed the employees. One 21-year-old woman, referred to as Dong, reported working 12 hours a day, six or seven days a week, for the equivalent of approximately $850-1,000 per month. Shein does issue warnings and fines to factories if employees are overworked, but their high demands make the rules unrealistic.
Thibault said that “suppliers are willing to pay Shein’s fines or manage to circumvent the rules. Inspections, conducted by a third-party auditor, occur only twice a year.”
In other words, the constant demand for more stuff is so high that suppliers have concluded that it’s less costly to pay fines than to treat their workers fairly.
Amazon has also been questioned for its treatment of employees. Beginning in the summer of 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor reported investigations and legal action taken against Amazon by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, the main concern was “hazardous working conditions leading to serious lower back and other musculoskeletal disorders at Amazon facilities.” While the cases were settled in December 2024, many people still have concerns. The U.S. Attorney of the Southern District of New York, for example, is currently conducting a separate investigation of issues surrounding safety, pay and suspicions of inadequate reporting of worker injuries.
Excessive purchases from stores like Shein and Amazon directly contribute to the mistreatment of employees. Those who have no better options are overworked and underpaid so that we can keep consuming anything and everything that appeals to us. Making small purchases from online stores can feel insignificant, but I think it’s important to be aware of how we might play a part in the issue.
The consumerist mindset curated by social media advertisements causes students to feel like they have to buy far more than they need from stores like these. When we’re entering into new or stressful experiences, it can be easy to believe that a put-together influencer has all the answers. We can combat this mindset, however, by trusting our own experiences to tell us what we need. If taking notes with a computer or notebook has worked fine in the past, then chances are I don’t need to switch to an iPad now. And if I never wanted to use a curling iron in high school, I probably won’t want to in college either.
If you do feel a genuine need or desire to try something new, there are more ethical ways to buy things than from unethical suppliers. Buying items secondhand is one easy way to do this. You can often find better-made products for good prices through thrift stores and peddler’s malls. Better-quality items last longer than a Shein purchase would, anyway, so they’ll be less likely to fall apart a month from now.
As we start a new semester at Asbury, it’s a great time to start looking critically at the product recommendations that we’re fed through social media. We should view them with the understanding that they are advertisements first and foremost, and that our consumption habits have ramifications. This can help us sift through the noise of overconsumption so that our college buying habits match our genuine needs.
Photo courtesy of Unsplash.
