Looking forward to a treat is a tale as old as time, or at least as old as capitalism. It’s the delayed gratification game: After eating broccoli you can have curly fries, once you finish crying over math homework you can watch TV, when work is over you can have fun—and maybe there’ll be a couple years of retirement you can squeeze in before you hit the can. Now, in the digital age, the concept of treating yourself has become a staple among young adults looking to make today’s economic stress go down more smoothly.
That’s because being an adult doesn’t seem to have the promise of agency and purpose it once did. At the risk of sounding like Debbie Downer at Disney, millennials and older Gen Zers are doing the non-fun adult things like working without the added benefits of being able to afford a house, much less a comfortable life or even a world that isn’t subject to the chaos of climate change, political extremism, and a pandemic. Why not get a treat—maybe some ice cream, a little plant, or even a Garfield phone—to wash the bitter taste of reality all down?
