Materialism Related to Self Esteem in Teens

At a certain point in a child's life products can become an obsession. I'm sure that we all remember paging through the toy catalog wishing that we could have every toy. When children get a little bit older, they sometimes develop a yearning for designer clothing, jewelry, or makeup, as if owning these things will make them into better people.

The University of Minnesota reports that it has done a study of materialism in young people and discovered that it is closely related to self esteem issues. Professor Deborah Roedder John has conducted the study. It finds that self-esteem in adolescence correlates to materialism. Materialism generally increases from about the years 8 to 12, but then drops near the end of the high school years, when children are 16 to 18 years of age; self-esteem generally drops in the periods when materialism is stronger.

The paper is entitled "Growing up in a Material World: Age Differences in Materialism in Children and Adolescents," and will appear in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

Interestingly, even a small rise in self-esteem will drastically reduce the amount of materialism in a child. Children were given paper plates with self-esteem messages written on them by their peers. Even this small gesture raised their self-esteem enough to drastically reduce their desire for various materialistic rewards.

Thus, it would appear that it is not that difficult to raise the self-esteem of a child. It is especially helpful if the child interacts well with its peers, but it is possible for parents to raise the self-esteem on their own. Frequent praise or small tasks well done is one effective method for doing this.

The study also shows parents the way out of the materialistic trap. If they can increase their child's self-esteem, something that they should be doing anyway, they will find that they save a lot of money.

The study is also interesting in that it shows that advertisers, whether intentionally or not, market most effectively to teens with low self-esteem. Furthermore, the acquisition of goods does not in and of itself lead a child out of low self-esteem. That will happen naturally. Parents should resist the impulse to make their children feel better by running out to the store and buying them the latest fad item. This won't help anything. It will just deplete their resources and encourage bad buying habits.

Parents seeking to innoculate their children from marketing messages have only to instill a sense of self-worth in them.

Teen Materialism, U of Minn.