The Exam Season Spending Spree Is a Warning You're Not Reading

A wave of high school graduates across China are dropping thousands on digital products, graduation trips, and medical beauty treatments right after their college entrance exams. Parents are footing the bill. Some families are feeling real strain. Here's the uncomfortable truth nobody wants to say out loud. You just graduated from high school. Not from a trust fund. This consumption craze isn't about celebrating freedom. It's about status signaling to people you'll never see again. The new phone, the cosmetic procedure, the Instagram-worthy trip — these are debt contracts with your future self. You're borrowing from your 25-year-old to impress your 18-year-old peers. The same pattern shows up everywhere. I read five relationship posts this week. Every single one was the same story dressed in different clothes. Someone feeling hurt because their partner won't compromise. Someone upset their girlfriend prioritizes friends. Someone exhausted by a two-year relationship they can't leave. Here's what's actually happening. Nobody has learned to sit with their own discomfort. We've been sold a story that relationships exist to make us feel good all the time. That's not a relationship. That's a subscription service. The real mental-health-tips for relationships-in-digital-age are brutally simple. First, stop treating your partner like a happiness vending machine. No human can be your everything. The girlfriend who puts friends first isn't rejecting you — she's healthy. Your boyfriend who gets upset when you visit home isn't controlling you — he's insecure. These are different problems requiring different solutions. Second, the Ozempic post broke my heart. Someone taking medication just to prove they don't overeat. That's not about food. That's about being gaslit by the medical system until you'd rather harm yourself than be disbelieved. The pattern is everywhere. We've outsourced our emotional validation to people, products, and procedures. Then we're surprised when they fail us. Your best friend who's a "loser" — what does that word actually mean? That they don't make enough money? That they're not ambitious enough for your timeline? Take a hard look at who you're becoming when you use that language. The solution isn't more consumption or better partners. It's learning to be alone with yourself without needing to escape. Hardest lesson I ever learned. Only one that ever mattered.