Reflection: We Are What We Consume?

Recently, our student ministry team ran across an article from the Fuller Youth Institute by Kris Fernhout entitled "We Are What We Consume."

What author Kris Fernhout does in this article, is that he allows adults to better understand the world in which today’s children are growing up. A world where “about two-thirds of the $11 trillion U.S. economy is spent on consumer goods.” Consumerism is at an all time high, and adolescents play a more significant role in this than we would imagine. Advertisements and marketing strategies are targeting children and teenagers because they understand what the article’s title suggests “We Are What We Consume.”

Adolescents crave not just an identity, but an identity that will make them accepted. The article argues that this identity is created through what they own. No longer is it just about what items determine what is cool or not cool. It has come to the sad reality that many believe they cannot be defined by society without a pair of Toms or the new iPhone or whatever it is that kids are being told to purchase. To make matters worse, the advertisers feed off of this. They further push the notion that their product is necessary to create an identity.

So how do we respond as parents, youth leaders and role models? To be angry and to blame the system would be one possibility. However, this would solve very little. As much as we may dislike it, the fact remains that this trend will only continue to grow. And on top of this, we may even find that we are unknowingly contributing to the problem as well.

A better alternative would be to take consumerism for what it is to these children: another form of pressure. It serves as just one more thing to which students are expected to give in so that they will be accepted. When we realize this, we realize the importance of helping them find their identity in something else. We want them to understand that what they buy and the things they have are not what define them. Our hope is that they find their identity in Jesus Christ. That they realize that they do not need to fear being abandoned or fear not being loved because there is a God in Heaven that desires a personal relationship with them and loves them exactly the way He created them.

However, for them to be able to understand this we must enable them to look past what everyone is buying. Try to figure out the things in your student’s lives that they feel they “need” to be accepted. Reflect on the things in your life that you sometimes feel that you “must own” to be accepted by your peers. Once we better understand these pressures that consumerism bring, then we are able to steer their identity development away from it.

Let us all pray for the students, the parents and the leaders, that we are able to find the truth about where our identity comes from and to alter the thought process from “We Are What We Consume” to “We Are a Follower of Christ.”

- Christian