Why read this: This is a piece of grown-up business journalism in miniature: in seven paragraphs it links psychology, regulation, neurochemistry and a comparative China case study, and asks readers to hold all four threads at once. For Year 9-11 EAL readers who are ready to leave behind tidy, single-claim texts, it is exactly the kind of argument they need to practise on. The topic also sits inside students' own lives — TikTok, Temu, Shein and the late-night scroll-and-tap loop — which lets the harder work of unpacking abstract noun phrases happen on familiar ground. The hedged closing quote on the 'fine line' between exploitation and enhancement gives readers a real opportunity to identify a writer's stance from convention, not from a flagged opinion sentence.
What to notice: The central reading challenge is not rare lexis but the way ordinary words stack into compound noun phrases — 'addictive design', 'atmospheric cues', 'social-commerce sales', 'time-limited promotions', 'year-on-year growth' — that behave as single conceptual units. Readers who try to translate them word by word will lose the sentence; readers who chunk them into one idea each will follow the argument. Notice also the pattern of paragraph-opening connectives ('Regulators have begun…', 'The condition is easy to underestimate…', 'What makes a shopping app pleasurable is…', 'The most instructive market is China…'): each opening tells you what work the paragraph is about to do. Finally, watch the hedging modals — 'can', 'may', 'increasingly', 'roughly' — which hold the writer's claims at one remove from certainty.
Skills practised: Three core moves. First, paraphrasing dense compound noun phrases back into concrete language ('atmospheric cues' becomes 'small things in the livestream — the host's tone, the rolling chat — that nudge you to buy'); pair tasks where students unpack one phrase per paragraph build the muscle quickly. Second, tracking long-range pronoun and noun-phrase reference: 'this design', 'the condition', 'the model', 'the playbook', 'that line' all refer back across earlier paragraphs and reward a second read. Third, identifying stance from hedged language and from the position of a quoted expert at the close of an article — students should be able to point to the specific Mark Griffiths sentence and explain why The Economist puts it where it does.
When the checkout never closes
Social platforms have turned shopping into a game — and regulators are starting to notice the score
Tap any green word in the article to see its meaning.
Picture the scene. It is past midnight, and a phone glows in someone's hand as they scroll through a feed of dancing influencers and brightly lit product clips. A finger taps. Two days later, parcels arrive that the buyer would rather their partner did not see. Psychologists have a name for the extreme version of this looploop: a shape produced by a curve that bends round and crosses itself; a sequence of instructions repeated continuously — 环；回路；循环 — oniomania, or shopping addiction — and it is increasingly easy to slide into, because the platforms now selling to us are engineered, in part, to make the urge to splurge: the strong wish to spend a lot of money quickly, often on things you do not need — 乱花钱的冲动 feel like fun.
Online retail used to mean searching a website for a known item; the new model dissolvesdissolve: To cause a solid substance to become part of a liquid; to formally end a partnership, assembly, or agreement. — 溶解；解散；解除 that boundaryboundary: A real or imagined line that marks the limit or extent of something, such as a territory, concept, or field of activity. — 边界；界限；分界线. Apps such as TikTok, Temu and Shein interleaveinterleave: To intersperse (something) at regular intervals between the parts of a thing or between items in a group — 穿插;交错 entertainment, social feedback and one-tap purchasing so seamlessly that watching and buying feel like a single activity. livestream shopping: buying things while watching a live video broadcast where a host shows products in real time — 直播购物, in particular, has matured into its own industry: jovial presenters run quizzes, banterbanter: Sharp, good-humoured, playful, typically spontaneous conversation — 玩笑话;打趣 with viewers in a live chat, and demonstrate products in real time, while a countdown clock and a flashing discount badge sit at the corner of the screen. Buying becomes the obvious next move, not a separate decision.
Regulatorsregulator: A person or group that sets standards of practice, especially those established by law — 监管机构 have begun to treat this design as a public-health question, not just a commercial one. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm: the part of a government or institution that puts laws and decisions into action — 执行机构, has opened an investigation into Temu, the Chinese online emporiumemporium: A shop that offers a wide variety of goods for sale; a department store; (with a descriptive word) a shop specializing in particular goods — 大型商场, citing concerns about the service's potentially addictive design: the way a product is built so that users keep using it more than they want to — 成瘾设计 — language that signals an intentintent: an aim or purpose; the determination to act in a certain way — 意图；目的 to police the architecture of an app, not merelymerely: just; only; no more than — 仅仅；只不过 its claims. Academic interest has tracked the regulatoryregulatory: Of or pertaining to regulation — 监管的 mood: reamsream: (chiefly in the plural) An abstract large amount of something — 大量;一大堆 of papers on compulsivecompulsive: Uncontrolled or reactive and irresistible — 强迫性的;无法自控的 digital shopping have appeared in the past two years, often arguing that engagementengagement: Active involvement or participation in an activity, cause, or interaction. — 参与；投入；约定 features cross from useful into manipulativemanipulative: A manipulable object designed to demonstrate a mathematical concept — 教学操作物 when their primary effect is to overrideoverride: To counteract the normal operation of something; to countermand with orders of higher priority — 推翻;凌驾 deliberationdeliberation: The act of deliberating, or of weighing and examining the reasons for and against a choice or measure; careful consideration; mature reflection — 深思熟虑.
The condition is easy to underestimate, partly because everybody shops. Researchers across several countries put the prevalenceprevalence: the fact or condition of being widespread or common at a particular time — 流行；普遍；盛行 of clinicalclinical: Relating to the observation and treatment of patients; coldly efficient and detached, without warmth or emotion. — 临床的；冷静客观的；冷淡的 shopping addiction at roughly five per cent, and emphasise that it is meaningfully distinct from the occasionaloccasional: occurring or appearing at irregular or infrequent intervals — 偶尔的；不定期的 impulse buy: something a person buys suddenly, without planning, often because they feel like it in the moment — 冲动消费: at its worst it generates real debt and corrodescorrode: to consume; to wear away; to prey upon; to impair — 消耗；逐渐损害；侵蚀 closeclose: Closed, shut — 关闭的 relationships. Avis Cardella, a former shopaholicshopaholic: Common term applied to someone suffering from oniomania — 购物成瘾者 who has written about her recovery, describes her purchasing episodes as trancetrance: A state of awareness, concentration, and/or focus that filters experience and information (for example, a state of meditation or possession by some being) — 出神状态-like and beyond conscious control — a description that maps uncomfortablyuncomfortably: In an uncomfortable manner — 令人不安地;尴尬地 well onto the scroll-and-tap loop the new platforms encourage.
What makes a shopping app pleasurable is, awkwardly, what makes it dangerous. A purchase produces a measurablemeasurable: Able to be measured — 可测量的 spike in dopaminedopamine: A neurotransmitter associated with movement, attention, learning, and the brain’s pleasure and reward system — 多巴胺, the brain's reward chemical, followed by a slumpslump: A heavy or helpless collapse; a slouching or drooping posture; a period of poor activity or performance, especially an extended period — 低迷;萧条 that the psychotherapist Pamela Roberts characterisescharacterise: To depict someone or something a particular way (often negative) — 描绘;刻画 as a hangover of shame: a bad feeling left after pleasure has worn off, like the way you feel the morning after drinking too much — 事后的羞愧 — the cost paid once the spend has lost its glamourglamour: Alluring beauty or charm (often with sex appeal) — 魅力;光鲜. Two further mechanisms amplifyamplify: To render larger, more extended, or more intense — 增强;放大 the cycle. The first, fear of missing out: the worry that other people are enjoying or getting something good while you are not — 错失恐惧（FOMO）, is sharpened by curatedcurate: To apply selectivity and taste to, as a collection of fashion items or web pages — 精心挑选 lifestyle posts and time-limited discounts that brands deploydeploy: To move troops or equipment into position for action; to use or employ resources effectively. — 部署；调配；有效利用 precisely because they work; recent research in the Journal of Business Research links it directly to compulsive online buying. The second, identified by Chinese researchers, involves the atmospheric cues: small signals in the surrounding environment — sound, lighting, mood, talk — that gently push someone to act in a certain way — 氛围线索 of a livestream — the host's tone, the rolling chat, the sense of a shared event — which together nudge viewers towardtoward: In the direction of — 朝着；向 a yes they would not otherwise give.
The most instructiveinstructive: Conveying knowledge, information or instruction — 富有启发的 market is China, where these innovations were trialled first and at staggering scale. social-commerce: buying and selling done through social-media platforms rather than dedicated shopping websites — 社交电商 sales there are forecast to exceed one trillion dollars this year, dwarfingdwarf: To make appear insignificant — 使相形见绌 the American total of around eighty-six billion. By the end of 2024 roughly three-quarters of Chinese internet users were tuning into livestreams, and a 2023 survey by China Youth Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiecemouthpiece: A spokesman; one who speaks on behalf of someone else — 代言人;喉舌, found nearly eighty per cent of respondentsrespondent: A person replying to a questionnaire — (调查)受访者 concedingconcede: To admit that something is true after first resisting; to surrender or yield a right or privilege. — 承认；让步；认输 they struggled to control their online spending. Chinese firms are now exporting the playbookplaybook: (by extension) A set of commonly employed tactics and strategies — 策略指南: TikTok Shop, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, posted year-on-year: comparing the same period in two different years (e.g. April 2025 vs April 2024) — 同比 growth of one hundred and twenty per cent in America in early 2025, while Western users find themselves doomscrolling Temu and Shein late into the evening.
Whether regulation can reintroducereintroduce: To introduce again — 重新引入 useful friction without spoiling the experience consumers say they enjoy is unsettled. Few shoppersshopper: A person who shops — 购物者 want a slower checkout, and not every viewer of a livestream becomes an addict. Mark Griffiths, an addiction researcher at Nottingham Trent University, frames the difficulty most cleanly: there is a fine line: a small difference between two things, often where one becomes the other very easily — 微妙界线 between exploitationexploitation: The unfair treatment or use of someone or something for one's own advantage; utilisation of resources — 剥削；利用；开发 and enhancement. The job for legislatorslegislator: Someone who creates or enacts laws — 立法者;议员, designers and shoppers alikealike: In the same manner, form, or degree; in common; equally — 同样地;一样地 is to work out, case by case, which side of that line a feature actually sits on.
Picture the scene. It is past midnight, and a phone glows in someone's hand as they scroll through a feed of dancing influencers and brightly lit product clips. A finger taps. Two days later, parcels arrive that the buyer would rather their partner did not see. Psychologists have a name for the extreme version of this looploop: a shape produced by a curve that bends round and crosses itself; a sequence of instructions repeated continuously — 环；回路；循环 — oniomania, or shopping addiction — and it is increasingly easy to slide into, because the platforms now selling to us are engineered, in part, to make the urge to splurge: the strong wish to spend a lot of money quickly, often on things you do not need — 乱花钱的冲动 feel like fun.
Online retail used to mean searching a website for a known item; the new model dissolvesdissolve: To cause a solid substance to become part of a liquid; to formally end a partnership, assembly, or agreement. — 溶解；解散；解除 that boundaryboundary: A real or imagined line that marks the limit or extent of something, such as a territory, concept, or field of activity. — 边界；界限；分界线. Apps such as TikTok, Temu and Shein interleaveinterleave: To intersperse (something) at regular intervals between the parts of a thing or between items in a group — 穿插;交错 entertainment, social feedback and one-tap purchasing so seamlessly that watching and buying feel like a single activity. livestream shopping: buying things while watching a live video broadcast where a host shows products in real time — 直播购物, in particular, has matured into its own industry: jovial presenters run quizzes, banterbanter: Sharp, good-humoured, playful, typically spontaneous conversation — 玩笑话;打趣 with viewers in a live chat, and demonstrate products in real time, while a countdown clock and a flashing discount badge sit at the corner of the screen. Buying becomes the obvious next move, not a separate decision.
Regulatorsregulator: A person or group that sets standards of practice, especially those established by law — 监管机构 have begun to treat this design as a public-health question, not just a commercial one. The European Commission, the EU's executive arm: the part of a government or institution that puts laws and decisions into action — 执行机构, has opened an investigation into Temu, the Chinese online emporiumemporium: A shop that offers a wide variety of goods for sale; a department store; (with a descriptive word) a shop specializing in particular goods — 大型商场, citing concerns about the service's potentially addictive design: the way a product is built so that users keep using it more than they want to — 成瘾设计 — language that signals an intentintent: an aim or purpose; the determination to act in a certain way — 意图；目的 to police the architecture of an app, not merelymerely: just; only; no more than — 仅仅；只不过 its claims. Academic interest has tracked the regulatoryregulatory: Of or pertaining to regulation — 监管的 mood: reamsream: (chiefly in the plural) An abstract large amount of something — 大量;一大堆 of papers on compulsivecompulsive: Uncontrolled or reactive and irresistible — 强迫性的;无法自控的 digital shopping have appeared in the past two years, often arguing that engagementengagement: Active involvement or participation in an activity, cause, or interaction. — 参与；投入；约定 features cross from useful into manipulativemanipulative: A manipulable object designed to demonstrate a mathematical concept — 教学操作物 when their primary effect is to overrideoverride: To counteract the normal operation of something; to countermand with orders of higher priority — 推翻;凌驾 deliberationdeliberation: The act of deliberating, or of weighing and examining the reasons for and against a choice or measure; careful consideration; mature reflection — 深思熟虑.
The condition is easy to underestimate, partly because everybody shops. Researchers across several countries put the prevalenceprevalence: the fact or condition of being widespread or common at a particular time — 流行；普遍；盛行 of clinicalclinical: Relating to the observation and treatment of patients; coldly efficient and detached, without warmth or emotion. — 临床的；冷静客观的；冷淡的 shopping addiction at roughly five per cent, and emphasise that it is meaningfully distinct from the occasionaloccasional: occurring or appearing at irregular or infrequent intervals — 偶尔的；不定期的 impulse buy: something a person buys suddenly, without planning, often because they feel like it in the moment — 冲动消费: at its worst it generates real debt and corrodescorrode: to consume; to wear away; to prey upon; to impair — 消耗；逐渐损害；侵蚀 closeclose: Closed, shut — 关闭的 relationships. Avis Cardella, a former shopaholicshopaholic: Common term applied to someone suffering from oniomania — 购物成瘾者 who has written about her recovery, describes her purchasing episodes as trancetrance: A state of awareness, concentration, and/or focus that filters experience and information (for example, a state of meditation or possession by some being) — 出神状态-like and beyond conscious control — a description that maps uncomfortablyuncomfortably: In an uncomfortable manner — 令人不安地;尴尬地 well onto the scroll-and-tap loop the new platforms encourage.
What makes a shopping app pleasurable is, awkwardly, what makes it dangerous. A purchase produces a measurablemeasurable: Able to be measured — 可测量的 spike in dopaminedopamine: A neurotransmitter associated with movement, attention, learning, and the brain’s pleasure and reward system — 多巴胺, the brain's reward chemical, followed by a slumpslump: A heavy or helpless collapse; a slouching or drooping posture; a period of poor activity or performance, especially an extended period — 低迷;萧条 that the psychotherapist Pamela Roberts characterisescharacterise: To depict someone or something a particular way (often negative) — 描绘;刻画 as a hangover of shame: a bad feeling left after pleasure has worn off, like the way you feel the morning after drinking too much — 事后的羞愧 — the cost paid once the spend has lost its glamourglamour: Alluring beauty or charm (often with sex appeal) — 魅力;光鲜. Two further mechanisms amplifyamplify: To render larger, more extended, or more intense — 增强;放大 the cycle. The first, fear of missing out: the worry that other people are enjoying or getting something good while you are not — 错失恐惧（FOMO）, is sharpened by curatedcurate: To apply selectivity and taste to, as a collection of fashion items or web pages — 精心挑选 lifestyle posts and time-limited discounts that brands deploydeploy: To move troops or equipment into position for action; to use or employ resources effectively. — 部署；调配；有效利用 precisely because they work; recent research in the Journal of Business Research links it directly to compulsive online buying. The second, identified by Chinese researchers, involves the atmospheric cues: small signals in the surrounding environment — sound, lighting, mood, talk — that gently push someone to act in a certain way — 氛围线索 of a livestream — the host's tone, the rolling chat, the sense of a shared event — which together nudge viewers towardtoward: In the direction of — 朝着；向 a yes they would not otherwise give.
The most instructiveinstructive: Conveying knowledge, information or instruction — 富有启发的 market is China, where these innovations were trialled first and at staggering scale. social-commerce: buying and selling done through social-media platforms rather than dedicated shopping websites — 社交电商 sales there are forecast to exceed one trillion dollars this year, dwarfingdwarf: To make appear insignificant — 使相形见绌 the American total of around eighty-six billion. By the end of 2024 roughly three-quarters of Chinese internet users were tuning into livestreams, and a 2023 survey by China Youth Daily, a Communist Party mouthpiecemouthpiece: A spokesman; one who speaks on behalf of someone else — 代言人;喉舌, found nearly eighty per cent of respondentsrespondent: A person replying to a questionnaire — (调查)受访者 concedingconcede: To admit that something is true after first resisting; to surrender or yield a right or privilege. — 承认；让步；认输 they struggled to control their online spending. Chinese firms are now exporting the playbookplaybook: (by extension) A set of commonly employed tactics and strategies — 策略指南: TikTok Shop, owned by Beijing-based ByteDance, posted year-on-year: comparing the same period in two different years (e.g. April 2025 vs April 2024) — 同比 growth of one hundred and twenty per cent in America in early 2025, while Western users find themselves doomscrolling Temu and Shein late into the evening.
Whether regulation can reintroducereintroduce: To introduce again — 重新引入 useful friction without spoiling the experience consumers say they enjoy is unsettled. Few shoppersshopper: A person who shops — 购物者 want a slower checkout, and not every viewer of a livestream becomes an addict. Mark Griffiths, an addiction researcher at Nottingham Trent University, frames the difficulty most cleanly: there is a fine line: a small difference between two things, often where one becomes the other very easily — 微妙界线 between exploitationexploitation: The unfair treatment or use of someone or something for one's own advantage; utilisation of resources — 剥削；利用；开发 and enhancement. The job for legislatorslegislator: Someone who creates or enacts laws — 立法者;议员, designers and shoppers alikealike: In the same manner, form, or degree; in common; equally — 同样地;一样地 is to work out, case by case, which side of that line a feature actually sits on.
Questions
Check your understanding
- 01
The article links the European Commission's investigation of Temu most directly to which broader shift?
- 02
Why does the article treat China as 'the most instructive market' for understanding the new shopping model?
- 03
Which sentence best captures the writer's overall stance on whether digital shopping platforms should be reined in?
- 04
Argue whether platforms such as TikTok Shop and Temu should be required to redesign features that the EU calls 'potentially addictive', or whether responsibility should rest mainly with individual shoppers. Use evidence from the article.
Suggested length: ~100 words
- 05
Assess the claim that the dopamine cycle described in the article is sufficient by itself to explain compulsive online shopping. What other factors does the article suggest matter, and how persuasive is that wider account?
Suggested length: ~100 words
Questions
Check your understanding
- 01
The article links the European Commission's investigation of Temu most directly to which broader shift?
- 02
Why does the article treat China as 'the most instructive market' for understanding the new shopping model?
- 03
Which sentence best captures the writer's overall stance on whether digital shopping platforms should be reined in?
- 04
Argue whether platforms such as TikTok Shop and Temu should be required to redesign features that the EU calls 'potentially addictive', or whether responsibility should rest mainly with individual shoppers. Use evidence from the article.
Suggested length: ~100 words
- 05
Assess the claim that the dopamine cycle described in the article is sufficient by itself to explain compulsive online shopping. What other factors does the article suggest matter, and how persuasive is that wider account?
Suggested length: ~100 words