Kids everywhere are going to hate me for saying this. But, with the summer winding down, the smell of school is in the air. That's right, the back-to-school shopping season is almost upon us. And for kids heading off for their freshman year of college, back to school shopping is getting more and more complicated every year.
Let's travel back in time a couple of years to 2001 when I started college at Fairfield University in Connecticut. I made the usual trip to Linens and Things, buying bedding and odds and ends for my dorm room. On top of that, I purchased the Dell desktop computer recommended by the school (it crapped out before the end of the first school year) and about $500 in textbooks and other school supplies. I brought an old printer with me that my Dad had laying around the house for about 4 years. No MP3 player. No laptop. No digital camera. No new cell phone. No video games.
That list is pretty simple. But today, tech writers at Yahoo!, Gina Hughes, Christopher Null, and Robin Baskin make their own lists of "freshman necessities". They are a bit more complex than my shopping list 5 years ago:
The list goes on and on. Kids going to college for the first time in the days of social networks, online communities,
and Web 2.0 have a lot more to think about than just making friends at orientation and figuring out where the cafeteria is. It almost seems like today, if you are left out of the tech bubble, you're bound to get left out of the social bubble, as well.
Maybe that is why kids (and their parents) are spending more money than ever getting ready for college. According to an article from USA Today, the average kid spends $1,200 getting ready for their first year in college. And that doesn't even include books.
So what happens if you aren't tech savvy or simply can't afford all these gadgets? With rising tuition and textbook costs, college is expensive enough to begin with. But if you don't catch on to Web 2.0 social networks and online communication, are you bound to spend the rest of your college career living in a single and attending craft night in the student center every Friday and Saturday night? Is the tech worth the high financial price?
And what happens when, inevitably, a kid rolls out of bed for his or her 8 AM class, forgets to lock the door to their dorm room, and someone swipes their stuff? Everyone knows that dorm rooms are hotbeds for expensive gadgets, and are a prime target for someone to looking to get a free iPod. Crime on college campuses is a serious problem, particularly theft and robbery. (For individual university statistics on college crimes, go to the Federal Office of Post Secondary Education.)
The number one thing that college kids spend money on is electronics, according to USA Today. This year, college students will spend an estimated $8.2 billion on electronics. more than they will on clothes.
"Back-to-school sales are "driven by electronics," says Mike Linton, chief marketing officer of Best Buy (BBY). "If you're a student, you want a lightweight portable laptop that looks very, very cool, and you can play music on it and play movies on it. You want to set it all up at the student union and look cool."
I guess now the only question left is where to plug everything in….
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