In the era of instant gratification, it was perhaps inevitable that retailers would eventually offer same-day grocery delivery, and it’s hardly surprising that it’s Amazon that is leading the way. After all, you can have almost any household item delivered to your door within 24 hours of clicking “buy”; why should something as essential as food be an exception?
For those of us who like the convenience of it – and who are willing to pay – it sounds revolutionary. No more battling for delivery slots from the major supermarkets; no having to plan what you want in advance. Your sudden craving for venison haunch can be satisfied that very day, and without the horror of being told off by the self-service checkout.
It’s likely that take-up will be greatest among younger and more affluent shoppers, but while Amazon Fresh (which is already well-established in the US) will initially be available only in north and east London, it suggests that our collective desire for our needs to be met instantly shows no sign of abating. We want what we want, and we want it quickly.
Research spanning decades suggests that children who are able to control their urge to receive a small reward immediately in favour of a bigger reward later on tend to perform better academically and socially, as well as reporting better health and wellbeing related outcomes. In early childhood, our ability to curb our impulses is poor, partly because the areas of the brain responsible for inhibiting responses are still in the early stages of development.
Traditionally, being able to delay gratification has been attributed to individual self-control, but more recent research suggests that it’s not quite that simple. In one study, participants were split into two groups. Children in the first group were given small boxes of crayons and promised larger boxes, which failed to materialise. Following that, they were given a sticker and told that a bigger selection was on its way. Again, the stickers never turned up. In the second group, the children were given the same promises, but they received the crayons and stickers as expected. Unsurprisingly, in the experimental part of the study, the children in the second group were more able to demonstrate impulse control in favour of a bigger reward later. It seems, therefore, that the ability to delay gratification is, at least in childhood, less a pure function of intrinsic personality, and more associated with beliefs about the world and how reliable promises of later rewards are likely to be.
But how useful is research like this, based on children, and offering tangible rewards after a 15-minute delay, to a culture in which almost anything can be bought and received virtually instantly, and in which employers increasingly expect their staff to be contactable at all times? As a society, we certainly seem less able to tolerate waiting, whether for a coffee that the barista takes too long to serve, or for the salary we think we deserve, and the culture of entitlement is spreading. Patience, once feted as being self-improving, is no longer fashionable. But what impact does this have on us? And what of those who have no choice but to wait for the things they want because they’re not rich enough to have them instantly? Convenience, of course, comes at a price (Prime membership and £6.99 a month, in the case of Amazon Fresh).
The fact is that most of the things worth having – which for many of us include meaningful relationships and a stable career – take time and effort to build. Hard work, adversity and disappointment are essential in developing character and perspective, but it’s difficult to reconcile that reality with a culture that promotes instant gratification. It’s frequently suggested that millennials, who have grown up surrounded by technology that can meet their every need, are more egotistical and selfish than their parents’ generation, and perhaps this is the case. After all, if you can have whatever you want whenever you want, it becomes infinitely easier to simply buy it because you can. And the more stuff we have, the less we tend to appreciate it. When possessions and people can be easily replaced, it’s all too easy to be seduced by the throwaway culture. Modern technology might have revolutionised our lives in the name of convenience but it hasn’t done much to encourage us to value the things that should be most important to us.
