photo: Dave/ BY-NC-SA

I’ve never had $5,000 a year to spend at the mall, but that’s the average amount teens spend per year on retail, or at least it was. A new study from Piper Jaffray says teen spending is down 14 percent this year. My friend Rose Powell and I know all to well about cutting back, “Now we definitely go, oh we should go do this. And then the first question is always like, how much does that cost?”

Rose and I use to go to movies all the time, but she can’t remember the last time we did that, “Yeah and like now, like we go hey like who’s house are we going to, to sit around at and just talk to each other.”

We’re definitely not shopping for new outfits these days, and we’re not alone. Clothing is one of the hardest hit categories – taking a 22 percent plunge. And that’s visible at my school. I don’t hear anyone bragging about their brand name jeans anymore, and Rose says there’s a reason why. “There’s totally like kinda a stigma now for being like oh I have hella money I just buy whatever I want. Cause your like oh look at that rich kid over there who is not economizing Ooo.”

Other students don’t have the option of economizing, like 17-year-old Derek Williams. After his mom went on disability and his older brother got laid off, Derek says hanging out with friends became extremely difficult, “My friends know my situation so they know sometimes that I don’t have money, and they want me to go out with them.”

So they lend him the money, which makes Derek feel like he’s got to treat his friends like Wells Fargo, “The way I think about it is if, like, they the bank, I took out this amount of money from them so I’m in debt and I pay it back.”

For most teenagers, having a social life is an essential part of our identity, and sometimes it requires money. But teens like me are finding ways around this. Now I shop at thrift store instead of department stores, and I even split $5 footlongs with my friends. But I think this recession has prepared me for the future. I’m learning to budget and save money, skills some people have trouble understanding well into adulthood.