The week that Victoria* got laid off from her job in Toronto, she spent $1,000 in a vintage store. Not long after, she signed a six-month lease in a glamorous city she loves and wants to spend more time in, despite not having another job yet.
“I’m definitely spending recklessly and not really thinking about the consequences,” she said, adding wryly, “I’m really good at this.”
It’s a lavish example of what’s known as “treat brain”: the practice of making little purchases or expenditures as a way of self-soothing amidst the chaos of modern life.
First taking hold on social media during the pandemic, “treat culture” has subcategories: “Sweet treat culture” floods TikTok with videos of $8 croissants and $10 matcha lattes (it’s always matchas) purchased as rewards for, say, going to work on a regular Tuesday. “Little treats” are more likely to be items, like a lip gloss, but could be a matcha, too. (If there is one main beneficiary of treat culture, it’s purveyors of powdered green tea.)
“My problem is that I always think I deserve a little treat,” observed one young woman in a TikTok with 29K likes. “Like today, it was a beautiful day and I went for a walk and I didn’t get a little treat. And then I was like, I deserve a little treat for that.”
Annie* loves buying herself expensive lattes and equally expensive grapes, but is also diligently saving to buy her first home. “I have no other vices,” she said. “I don’t drink, do nails, lashes, etc. For what purpose do I go to work and make money? I can buy a $7 croissant!”
Do not confuse this with “treat yo-self,” that hedonistic offspring of YOLO culture that flourished in the brief flowering of prosperity and optimism after the Great Recession, before Drake crossed the line from corny to problematic and girl-bossing went from aspirational to cautionary tale.
There is a nihilism to treat brain. It’s less about patting yourself on the back and more like constantly pressing the button for on-demand IV painkillers in a hospital. “I spend like a kid now,” said Maya*. “I just find being an adult is an exhausting business.”
The prevalence of this idea is tied to a growing cultural awareness of how the brain works. A related phenomenon is the “dopamine menu,” where you systematically build a list of things you can do to bring yourself joy.
It’s both a positive indicator of how destigmatized mental health discussions have become, and a slightly sinister 21st century impulse to optimize everything in our lives. Now that we think we understand how happiness works — you can trick your brain into producing this thing called dopamine — we’re trying to hack our way to joy, one fancy croissant at a time.
This is a real neurological phenomenon, by the way. “Anything that is pleasurable, reinforcing or novel increases dopamine firing in the brain’s reward pathway,” said Anna Lembke, a psychiatrist at Stanford University.
Lembke is the author of “Dopamine Nation” (and its new accompanying workbook), a 2021 book that examined the pitfalls of living in an age when sources of pleasure — from food to social media to shopping — have never been more available or, arguably, potent in their effects.
She points out that “the brain is far more complicated than just dopamine”; there are actually several neurotransmitters involved in how we experience treats. But she feels the emergence of dopamine as a “cultural trope” points to a larger phenomenon “in which pleasure and reward have come to dominate modern life.”
She sees “treat brain” as an extension of a social change that emerged before the pandemic. “COVID accelerated trends that were already happening, including our tendency to organize time around rewards, from checking our smartphones first thing in the morning while imbibing our preferred caffeinated beverage, to settling down with a bowl of ice-cream and our favourite Netflix show at night,” she said.
Lembke warns against long-term use of treats as a coping strategy. “In the short term, ‘treat brain’ works to make people feel better, but in the long term it may make people feel worse,” she said, “by gradually over time changing our hedonic, ‘joy’ set point, such that we need more potent stimuli to feel pleasure, and when we’re not using, we feel bad.”
Instead, she advocates a kind of “modern day ascetism,” based on the science of hormesis, the principle behind things like hot and cold therapy or intermittent fasting. “I recommend intentionally doing things that are challenging and don’t feel good in the moment, but make us feel better afterward,” she said.
As a millennial who came up during the time of “young people can’t buy a house because they buy too much avocado toast,” Toronto financial counsellor Jessica Moorhouse knows what it feels like to a) be the younger generation unfairly criticized for financial irresponsibility, and b) feel the temptation to buy things in the moment because future “big” purchases seem impossible.
So she extends grace to Gen Z — who tend to be the ones posting their little treats on TikTok — but has a bit of stern advice, too.
“Delayed gratification, and waiting to treat yourself less frequently, actually provides you more enjoyment and joy,” said Moorhouse. “There’s so much data that shows that if you pay for something in advance and then wait to get it, or you have to save for a long time to make that purchase, there’s a bigger psychological reward.”
Small treats equal small rewards. “In my twenties, when I was really broke and trying to live on a budget, I’d treat myself to a really sugary coffee every two weeks on payday,” Moorhouse said. “That was my treat for sticking to my budget. That’s the thing: You have to treat yourself for something that requires effort, not just getting through the day, which you would have done regardless.”
But what if you feel that even if you never drink another matcha, the things you want — and the future you hoped for — seem impossible anyway?
“I thought that too, and guess what? Now, I own a house,” said Moorhouse, who points out that even though the goalposts for affordability have moved even further away, there are also more side hustle opportunities available, like monetizing a TikTok account.
“What changed things for me is that I discovered the online personal finance community, which is all about hope,” she said. “The overall theme is, ‘What do you want out of life? What are some goals you can make to get there? Even if you don’t have a lot, let’s start small.’”
While they might not document it on social media, there is an older cohort with a treat brain mentality. They might have been able to buy a home, have children, hit all the right milestones, and still find themselves knocked sideways by that toxic combination of existential panic and disillusionment that makes putting a $4,700 Phoebe Philo Gig bag on your credit card seem like a good choice.
To those people, Moorhouse would gently warn of the spectre of an underfunded retirement—“you don’t want to wake up at $60 with zero dollars but a lot of shoes and bags” — and refer them to a chapter in her new book, “Everything But The Money: The Hidden Barriers Between You And Financial Freedom,” about “internal family systems.” This posits that we all have parts of ourselves that can take on different roles. “We need to take care of ourselves,” she said. “If you have trouble doing that, create a different version of yourself, like a parent swooping in and taking care of the situation because the child is running the show and doing a lot of irresponsible stuff.”
Money, of course, is often tied to the deepest parts of our psyche. “The last years have taught me how easily money comes and goes — if you’re privileged enough to have it coming in — so it’s futile to worry about it when you have very little control,” said Victoria, lavishly spending while unemployed. “On the surface level, the thinking is: The world is ending soon, what am I saving for? On a deeper level I’m trying to challenge, or at least ignore, a scarcity mindset that has plagued me all my life, and generally worry less about money.” That at least deserves a matcha.
*Names have been changed upon sources’ request.
