Like so many others, I discovered Temu; it was great… at first. Slowly, it pulled me in with buy so much, get so much free, play a game for a month and buy so much to get free gifts. Cheap little items added up so fast. Temu is designed to prey on shopaholics like me, on people who are depressed and seeking dopamine jolts.

Temu played very nicely with my ADHD and allowed me to “cheaply” add to my hobby graveyard. Each little bit is so small, I can get so many add-ons and have all the tools and toys for each new hobby: diamond paintings, jewelry making, making pens, crochet, markers, and colouring books. Buying little bits of beads, findings, clasps, cord, organizers, drills, dice, trays for diamond gems, pens of different sizes for diamond painting, so many diamond painting sheets, more beads, label makers……and suddenly I have spent a thousand dollars in little increments, fifty here, twenty there, spend a hundred and get credit back.

It was easy, so easy to throw cheap things in the cart, same as the trap of the dollar stores. But they were cheap in multiple ways: low price but also cheap quality, so they would break quickly. For example, I would buy stands for selling my crafts I made, but they broke over and over, and if I had just paid someone locally to make solid wood ones, I would still have them, and I would have supported the local economy rather than someone in China. I purchased charger cords that would die so quickly that I was buying them in bulk. If I had just gone and bought a heavy-duty one from a local electronics store, I would have been able to save the landfill some. 

I was buying more things than I could use, buying 10 diamond paintings when I only did a few before I lost interest. I was living in an apartment that was bursting at the seams. It was so full of stuff that I couldn’t find anything and ended up overpurchasing and perpetuating the cycle of clutter. I was overpurchasing for my children, and now I am dealing with a five-year-old who has trouble with gratitude and not demanding more. She is being given gifts by people and asking for a second one, or when given an option, whining for both. She is used to a disposable world, and when anything breaks, she says, ‘It’s ok, mommy can just buy a new one.’ I never wanted that for her. I know I face the headache of facing the consequences of my shopping addiction by having to do the painful work (for both of us) of parenting her and guiding her into the adult I want her to become so she can achieve her full potential. 

Temu is a trap that preys on those who are depressed, those who are suffering from a shopping addiction, those who are struggling so hard to make ends meet that they have to choose the cheap option and hope it holds out long enough. Temu is a contributor to tantrums of adults and children when their cheap plastic crap breaks. Temu is a huge contributor to landfills and damaging ecosystems. Temu is damaging to those who are working for them, because if we truly look at ourselves, we know that there is no way that these prices can be achieved without unethical wages and without ecological negligence… Temu is a trap for so many in so many ways.