SHOPPING

ONLINE SHOPPING

Story by Ambour Leal Where the stores are always open

THERE IS A LOT to be said for shopping online. It is convenient and the choice is more than one can find in any brick-andmortar store. But there are pros and cons.

Lumberton sophomore Joel Jimenez said he doesn’t like to shop online but will every now and then.

“I’m always looking at stuff online, but online shopping is not something I constantly do since I’m already not much of a shopper either,” he said.

Before COVID hit the U.S., the civil engineering major said he did a bit less shopping. However, since COVID, he has started to do it more often. He prefers to order items related to shoes, sports and shirts.

“I think it’s more risky online,” he said. “It could go 50/50 online — I’d rather be in person and shopping at a store than online. I always want to try on clothing first before buying and when I buy something, I want to get it then and there at the store rather than wait.

“I don’t want to deal with sending something back and getting my money back. (Purchases online) might not look like it’s picture, it might not fit, there are sketchy websites, and returning something in the mail can just be a hassle.”

Orange freshman Cameron Guyote said he used to shop much more online than he does now and is currently more of an online window shopper than buyer.

The cybersecurity major said he tends to purchase electronics online.

Shopping — page 11

UPbeat

SPRING 2022 • PAGE 10

Problems — from page 7

“At the end of the day they just kind of feel like a waste of my time,” he said. “I would rather try to fulfill my time with better things to do.”

However, the business major does not think that social media is an inherently bad thing — far from it, actually.

“Don’t get me wrong it’s not all bad; it’s great for spreading information around and staying connected to your friends, it even helps you from a business aspect and can just be really handy in general,” Tilly said. “I think people have just kind of ruined it.”

He went on to say how draining of an experience being enveloped in social media can be.

“You know, it’s like you’re in a popularity contest with everyone on it,” he said. “Everyone is constantly looking for someone else’s approval. I just got so tired of that aspect of it and decided to start living for myself.”

This led Tilly to make a personal decision to take a step away from social media in order to take some time to focus on himself and his mental wellbeing, only keeping Snapchat strictly for communication purposes. He described the feeling of being free from social media as a satisfying one. Not feeling the need to constantly check his phone and just being more in the moment was refreshing. It quickly became a lifestyle for him.

Tilly’s case was not an isolated event on the Lamar campus. Surveying students while walking around campus, 20 students were asked if they felt social media was affecting their mental health for the worse. 17 of those students responded with a “yes.” However, all of those students still had some social media accounts and only three said they have seriously considered deleting them.

Beaumont sophomore Ladarius Harris described his time on social media as “mostly pretty negative.” An avid Houston Texans fan, the finance major explained how most of his negative, and sometimes volatile, interactions came from arguments on the topic of sports across multiple platforms. These exchanges could be simple disagreements but often they can escalate into much more.

“It’s crazy some of the stuff that people say,” Harris said, “I feel like they just take it to a level that it shouldn’t have to go. I don’t know man, some people are just evil.”

Interactions like these have caused Harris to delete the apps from his phone on several different occasions. However, he can’t bring himself to kick it for good.

“I mean social media is super addicting,” he said. “It’s like you gotta come back to see what people are saying.”

The addictive factor of social media is something almost every person asked commented about on the subject. It may very well be the most insidious feature of these apps — the fact that many people will acknowledge the negative effects that social media has on them but are simply too addicted to the product to stop, regardless of their feelings on the matter.

The question is what keeps dragging us back into social media’s clutches?

Addictioncenter.com explains that social media sites produce the same neural circuitry that is caused by gambling and recreational drugs to keep consumers using their product as much as possible. Recent studies have even shown the constant stream of retweets, likes and shares trigger the same chemical reaction in the brain as cocaine. This is what causes that constant need to come back to the app you just closed.

This leads us to the big question; Is social media inherently bad for you? Of course not. It is an extremely useful tool in today’s content-driven age and it allows us to stay connected to friends and loved ones all over the world.

Like all good things, though, it can have its downsides, so people should practice some self-restraint while using it. It doesn’t have to be anything as big as logging off completely, but that’s up to you.

If you ever get tired of doomscrolling through Twitter, feeling like you’re not keeping up with the Joneses on Instagram, or arguing on Facebook, don’t be afraid to put down your phone and take a couple of hours for yourself and your mental health.

Shopping — from page 10

“I look at stuff online and check out the prices on different things that I might be looking for,” he said. “When I was building my computer, it was, like, on a daily basis. I was checking sites, checking prices, seeing if any of them would drop, and seeing if there’s any discounts that came out or anything like that.”

Guyote said he doesn’t have a preference for shopping online or in person. Instead, he feels it is more of a case-by-case basis, preferring to go to the place that has what he is looking for.

“If you need something online, you just have to buy it,” he said. “There is a wider variety of things, it’s more accessible, and there are more options to pick from.”

His most memorable shopping experience online was when he finally bought the last piece he needed to start building his computer — a graphics card that cost about $500. The combined total of all the computer parts

PAGE 11 • SPRING 2022 cost him about $2,000 he said.

“It was just a really big deal because that computer means a whole lot to me and having it finally finished and ready to go — that was a really big moment for me,” he said.

Nederland junior Micheala Howard said she is not much of an online shopper.

“I’ll do it if I have to and I feel like it’s a little bit exhausting,” she said. “I’ll shop online like two or three times a month.”

Since COVID, she has started to shop online a bit more, especially for items such as clothes, textbooks, shoes, and skin care.

“Sometimes I go on apps but I don’t usually buy anything,” the English major said. “I just like to browse, kind of like browsing a digital magazine.”

When it comes to shopping for items like clothes or food, Howard said she tends to prefer going to an in-person department store and use online shopping mostly for items she needs that her local stores don’t have.

“I don’t really believe in buying groceries online because you never know when the due dates are,” she said. “When I go to the store in person, I can physically check.”

Lumberton freshman Alex Paulino said he is all for online shopping.

The mechanical engineering major sometimes uses various platforms to shop or browse, such as the Facebook Marketplace or buying directly from people from ads on apps like Instagram.

When Paulino bought a truck from the Facebook Marketplace, he arranged the meeting to be in person and paid in cash, he said.

The Facebook Marketplace is similar to Ebay. Users can start conversations with each other in order to arrange payment or a meeting.

Paulino said he did not shop as much before the pandemic, mainly because he was younger and didn’t have as much money. Now, he tends to shop online about once a month to buy clothes, hats or accessories.

Overall, the students said that they all tend to window shop online rather than just making a purchase and that the pandemic did not really affect how much they shopped online.

“Shopping online is easier, it saves gas money, there’s a broader range of things you can buy, and I like to just look at my options,” Paulino said. “The anticipation of it coming in the mail — Like waiting for something bought online to come in is probably the best thing compared to going in and buying it at the store.”