Sadie has been hiding the problem of his family for years. Working day, works as a purchase agent for a scientific company, and all this requires great demands to put in high reactive chemical 8 million glass vessels. But in his personal time, Sadie continues to buy himself. Cameras, accessories, scrapbook supply, metal equipment, lasers, board games, planners, fountains, technology tools, nails, computer keyboard pieces and thread. He bought everything online.
He had previously knew, he had $ 20,000 in debt. “I couldn’t believe it,” he explained. “I’ve never said my husband how bad it was.” He had paid debt, but he cannot say that where it is today. “I’m ashamed, I will not check the balance,” he explained. Sadie asked to continue to be anonymous, so the family would not know that the trader is compulsive.
Sadie’s struggle is not a new phenomenon. German Kraepelin German psychiatrist described Lust pataus – Buy pathological desire – 1899. Since the year. It worries that the problems are doing much worse. Last year, the European Commission reported Researching various aspects of the Person’s businessAmong other things, “dangers associated with the addiction of the service”.
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As more and more purchases move online, sellers use strong psychological techniques to continue spending money to buyers. Internet In fact, “something similar to a drug resembles” drugs, “Anna Lembke, the author of Stanford University in California, and the author of known books on dependency. As a result, it becomes a problem with masses.”
And this problem spreads around the world. Researchers have shopped in many countries, in the United States, Turkey, Poland, Germany, India, Brazil, South Korea and Pakistan, where almost a third of college students were classified as compulsive buyers and online.
There is a special concern about the problem in China, which can have the greatest prevalence of the situation ever recorded. Heping, a Marketing Researcher at Shenzhen University in China, found a survey about 29.1% of the Chinese general population.
The prevalence of the problem is one of the many researchers around the world that are researching, as well as those involved in brainways and relates compulsive purchases with similar types of conditions. Researchers analyzing these issues face a problem: there is no official diagnosis of addiction or compulsive purchase, which can help stimulate support and support for research and support.
Consumer culture
Mandatory shopping Probably Money and Markets, the Internet has been much easier for people to shop. “Before increasing online shopping in China, few people pay attention to the compulsive purchase,” he says. Today, China is one of the most developed worldwide in terms of internet trade, “he says. Add the “consumer materialist culture” and you describe the epidemic of the purchase dependence.
Compulsory purchases were mostly seen as the most affected women’s problems. But not all studies have found differences between genres, especially among young people. In China, “says that the gender gap in favor of compulsive shopping is tightened, as men embrace more and more online shopping between the Internet retail boom”.
Although the data suggest that the problem is proposed, there is no introduction to two main references used to help with addictions or compulsive purchases: International Departments maintained by World Health Organization – and Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM). Many clinical and researchers say that the situation has reached a civil servant. This is necessary to help you deal with the problem to achieve the problem.
Brain exams indicate that the purchase can activate the dopamine award system.
A reason to compulsive purchase is not a recognized disorder is not a lack of consensus. Researchers discuss the impulse to activate similarities similar to obsessive-compulsive disorder, or behavior dependence, drugs and alcohol-related means. Even if many researchers who looked at the subject, it seems to be more and more involving compulsive purchasing models among specialists, increasingly accepting the wider category of behavior dependencies. The game disorder is similar to the compulsive purchase, which was added in the fifth edition of the 2013 DSM, and was grouped with substances dependent.
According to Lembke, the phenomenology of purchasing dependence follows the classical dependency model: “People start to have fun or solve a problem, with anxiety or depression from loneliness.” If the behavior works for them, it is repeated “until the brain changed” and cannot be stopped, although they descend in debt while destroying close relations in some cases, they destroy relationships with the family.
There are images of the brain that support addiction theory. Colonian, German Charlotte Freenisus University scanned the brain of the treatment of shopping disorders who looked at the treatment of purchase purchases and 18 photos of control centers and shopping bags, as well as desirable objects such as bags and consumer electronics. In individuals with a purchase problem, these images activated the dopamine award system in Striatum – the same system involved in drug addiction. “When you show these photos, they are happy,” said Tretzke. “The dopaminergic system system is on fire.” This weakens the control system at the prefrontal cortex, Trotzke adds, affected individuals “no longer control” on their purchase behavior.
Compulsive purchases are shown to connect to this dopamine award system from people who are considering excessive amount of medicine that change this system, and then develop uncontrolled purchase behaviors. In one case of a person with Parkinson’s disease, the individual who took more dopaminergic medication than prescribed was “dressed in colorful clothes and wearing three golden necklaces.” “More than 5,000 pockets and 42 were bought more than old and usable cars”.
In 2021, 138 specialists from 35 countries bought to weigh diagnostic criteria for shopping disorders. The team used the Delphi method, which is an iterative and anonymous way of collecting opinions from a group that prevent researchers from preventing an impact on an impact. The group agreed that the “dependency behaviors” were “compulsive purchase disorder”. The analysis was proposed to buy intrusive needs; buying the highest purchase and buying bad feelings; and the rest of the negative consequences are purchasing.
However, the idea of whether or not people are a compulsive disorder can be simplistic. “Spectrum is a mess, like drugs and alcohol,” says Lembke. “Some people have a purchase problem and other people end with very serious addiction, where they enter a giant debt financial and lose their main relationship.”
The 2020 studies of more than 1,000 people in Switzerland were grouped in buyers category, including “risk” and “addiction”. Researchers estimated that around 3% of people in their sample were respected around the world, with 11% of endangered, “buying things / things all the time” and “I think of buying things” and “buying things to change my humor.”
Images of brain images, such as Totzke’s writing cannot be used to diagnose a compulsive compulsive disorder, because shopping is at least rewarding for most people. “I like shopping, and when shopping-related things show me, my brain reward system is also activating,” he explained.
Limited treatment options
An empirical treatment against compulsive purchase is a cognitive attitude therapy, according to Trotzke. But few studies explored other therapeutic or pharmacological perspectives. Also, little work has been done in how the retail environment can affect problematic purchases.
Maèva Flayelle and Joël Billieux, conductive conductors of Swiss Lausanne tries to expand the perspective of the individual’s psychology, in Flayelle’s words, “user control skills” challenges. Many of these features say shopping for purchases, buying “reward” points, roulette wheels and discount wheels, which allow shopping time pressures and buyers allow you to pay fees.
Another development in online purchases are “boxes boxes” integrated in some video games. To open the money for these costs and maybe other players may be able to sell the unknown but potentially valuable digital elements. These boxes combine game, shopping and games in a single package that proves that it is irresistible for some people. Links Kutxes run away so far the types of regulations placed on slots.
A 2024 Council of Europe Policy Paper He argued that the video game industry should take damage to its products and recommend “effective regulatory measures”. But, as Flayelle says, “We are really at the beginning.” And the technological innovation of online businesses moves much faster than research and regulation.
Lembke has taken part in some academic debates for banning in advertising areas designed for teenagers, but this can be resistant in the United States, and the Trump President’s Administration said he will reduce the regulations. In China, those who are desire to implement measures that encourage consumer purchases are more than steps to avoid addiction to shop. “
Although the countries could not help regulations, trade restrictions could be placed in the e-commerce industry. Along with the Design of Temu’s addiction, along with the research, The European Commission announced early February Whether “low value imports” is also looking for harmful or false. About 12 million plots of land are included in the EU market, as the Commission in 2022 times.
Meanwhile, the “shopping dependencies” allows the self-described to deal with their problems, both with a professional or personal support. People with Purchasing Problems Collect on social media platforms, such as Reddit, where they share stories and change each other’s habits. As a moderator in one of these forums, Sadie has recently made shopping, saying that his “world view and priorities have changed.
Resting without interruption through products has been a sadie rebellion. “Every time our phone plays we bomb the sweet mini,” he explains. “We’re all on the hamster wheel, our brain again and again we’re trying to play that dopamine button.”
This article reproduces with permission and has been First posted On March 4, 2025.
