Young people as heroes or villains in sustainable fashion

Young people have been portrayed in two contradicting ways in relation to the wicked problem of sustainability within the fashion industry. One of these depictions describes young people as heroes, the innovators for the sustainable fashion industry; however, they are also described as the villains, partaking in a hedonistic lifestyle, halting the movement towards sustainability within the fashion industry. This research aimed to explore these contradicting portrayals, investigating their effectiveness in describing the reality of young people. TikTok, a 2018 launched application with a majority demographic of young people, was used, due to the observed large cultural impact on both consumer behaviour and political activism of young people. The use of TikTok will provide a new lens and insight into the sustainability discussion. The TikTok research material depicted a large community of fast fashion consumers, who participated in competitive consumption, over-consumption, and behavioural traits of addiction. These trends were shown to not be specific to TikTok nor young people, highlighting a wider societal theme of the normalisation of over-consumption and thus consumption-based society. Additionally, a smaller yet active community of digital activists advocating for sustainability were also identified on TikTok, alike to the exclusive group of activists observed in offline society. The observed activism was identified to be routed in emotion, such as humour and frustration, differing from the ‘traditional’ understanding of activism. Responses of the wider TikTok community to this content differed greatly dependent on the style of activism. Comedic and socio-economically sympathetic activism produced the most productive discussions on sustainability. In conclusion, I identified that the binary contradicting portrayals did not effectively describe the behaviour of young people as they neglected the complex navigation young people partake in to feel the fundamental desires of belonging and superiority in society.