“I think of seventh grade as being the worst age of a person’s life. It’s really a fraught time, and there’s all this insecurity that kids have about, “Who am I? Do people like me? What kind of person am I?” So, how do we navigate that? Well, our appearance is one of the things we navigate with. So, what does a kid see when they see another kid?” In The Atlantic, a discussion with a researcher who has studied materialism for three decades: Why Kids Want Things. (My 12 year-old son only discusses two topics with me. First, he wants an iPhone and refuses to be the last person in his grade to get one. Second, he’s hungry and wants a snack.)