Shopping online an addiction? That’s just idiocy.com

Experts believe a new disorder should be added to the lexicon of mental health illnesses. It’s called BsD, Buyingshopping Disorder — an addiction to shopping online.

What’s worse, psychiatrists and researchers say it bears so many similarities to other uncontrollable compulsive disorders that there is an urgent need to help these online shoppers who are (surprise!) mostly young women.

I’ve heard it all now. Don’t worry girls, that craving for a new dress, handbag, pair of shoes — all so easy, click, click, pay, hurrah, 24-hour delivery guaranteed, money back if you change your mind — is just another a medical condition.

the shopping gives sufferers a high, you see — a surge of the brain chemical dopamine. And that high makes them buy more. Not their fault at all.

Lord alive. What I was taught on my mother’s knee — don’t spend what you don’t have, or buy what you don’t need — no longer applies. It’s not greedy or stupid to overspend, it’s having BsD.

Of course, some people have genuinely addictive personalities. And the journal Comprehensive psychiatry says five per cent of the population are affected by this ‘craving for buying’. But there is an unhealthy tendency to medicalise every aspect of bad behaviour today. stuffing your face? It’s your genes or compulsive eating disorder. Feeling sad? You’re depressed.

Greed, sadness, a longing for nice clothes — everyone has these feelings. But turning a love of shopping into a medical condition gives people an excuse to abuse their credit cards.

today, every reality star pumps out their own fashion tips online, like this year’s Love Island winner Amber Gill. Oh yes, I must buy a dozen cheese-cutting thong swimsuits or I’ll get depressed. With accounts like paypal, you don’t even see the money disappearing from your — or Mum and Dad’s — bank.

the fashion industry produces a tenth of the world’s carbon emissions, is the second largest consumer of its water supplies and pollutes oceans with microplastics. Yet young online shoppers are a generation of eco-warriors. What happened to the mantra ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’?

What happened to restraint, responsibility and self-control?