IN WHAT WAYS DOES EXPOSURE TO PEER LUXURY CONSUMPTION ON INSTAGRAM SHAPE THE EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER ASPIRATIONS OF TEENAGERS WITH PART-TIME JOBS?

IN WHAT WAYS DOES EXPOSURE TO PEER LUXURY CONSUMPTION ON INSTAGRAM SHAPE THE EDUCATIONAL AND CAREER ASPIRATIONS OF TEENAGERS WITH PART-TIME JOBS?This paper examines how exposure to peer luxury posts on Instagram relates to the educational and career aspirations of teenagers who hold part-time jobs. It introduces the Aspiration Gap — the tension between a teenager’s current life and the desirable lifestyles they see peers display online — as a proposed mechanism linking social-media exposure to decisions about education versus work. Drawing on an anonymous online survey of 200 adolescents aged 15–18 who work part-time and use Instagram, the study finds that the Aspiration Gap was widely reported and that three factors were associated with its direction: family background, patience (intertemporal discounting), and job type. Education leaning was more common among respondents from families that expected education, those classified as more patient, and those in skill-based jobs (about 70–85%), whereas work leaning was more common among respondents from families that needed money, those classified as more impatient, and those in labour-intensive jobs (about 75–80%). The findings extend the application of Social Comparison Theory and Conspicuous Consumption from emotional responses to reported life decisions. Because the design is cross-sectional and based on self-report, the results describe associations rather than causal effects; future work should test these patterns with experiments and longitudinal studies.