The young today spend a large amount of their leisure time in shopping centres. It is feared that this could have a negative influence on the young and society.

It is believed that shopping takes too much of free time of youngsters nowadays. Some people warn that the situation can have a negative effect not only on young people, but on the whole society. I agree with those concerns to some extent only. I truly believe that people excessively prefer shopping to more intellectually enriching types of activities, for instance going to museums, exibitions or theatre. Consumerism is encoraged by big business and producers through commercials on TV and Internet. Moreover, personalities of famous people are also envolved intoo the process: movie stars, sportsmen and singers from here and there tell their funs what they should buy. If young people were not so penchant for buying unnecessary stuff on a regular basis, many companies would not have become successful. The recent research carried out at Lomonosov State Unversity found out that even students who do not yet have stable income acknowlegde that 45 $ of what they buy is not necessary. Of course museums and exhibitions can not compete with shopping in terms of advertisement and promotion which are so important in the era where information decides everything. On the other hand the latest trends are rathet reassuring as offline shopping seems to go out of time with more and more people preferring to shop online. This is a positive trend because online shopping does not require much time and young people will stop spending on it all their leisure time instead of doing cultural activities. To conclude I would say that I am concerned about the present situation in terms of prioritising shopping above all. But I feel optimistic about the situation of shopping time in the future and strongly believe that shopping will at least not require too much time.