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a pink textured background with eyes looking at a hand with an image of someone holding boxes on their phone
Watching other people open their mail has never been more popular. (Image: Tina Tiller)

InternetDecember 20, 2023

The curious appeal of unboxing videos

a pink textured background with eyes looking at a hand with an image of someone holding boxes on their phone
Watching other people open their mail has never been more popular. (Image: Tina Tiller)

 The ‘unboxing’ genre of videos is a way to go shopping with people you’ve never met. It reveals how much the packaging of products has always been part of how and why we buy. 

Some weeks, the courier van pulls up to Emma Roma Jayne’s house three or four times, unloading packages of different shapes and sizes: protein powder, cowboy boots, an outfit she wants to wear at Rhythm and Vines. She is alone in her house, but she has company as she opens the packages: her 37,000 TikTok followers. The background is greige but the packages are colourful: a pastel blue box, a vibrant purple skirt. 

Jayne exclaims, beams, holds her new things up to the camera. “My heart is racing,” she says, as she unfolds a pair of embossed cowboy boots from a plastic packet. In perfect time, text appears over her head: a discount code for the shop where the boots came from. In the comments, the tell-tale #gifted tag. 

A Taranaki-based creator who initially joined TikTok to post about weight loss and fitness, Jayne’s turn to unboxing is hardly unique. Unboxing has become a staple on YouTube, with children able to earn millions of dollars by unboxing toys; there have been more than 25 billion views of YouTube videos with unboxing in the title this year alone. “Haul” photos are hallmarks of Instagram carousels, and TikTok has become home to a similar style of content – just with shorter videos.

Of course, people liked looking at other people’s stuff before the internet. Gathering around to watch someone else open Christmas or birthday presents is a longstanding hallmark of celebrations. Like unboxing videos, part of the enjoyment is watching the emotion of surprise, gratitude or concealed disappointment. The mystery is part of the enjoyment: a concealed object is revealed, and the response to the object is a way to understand a person you know more (even if it’s just a certainty that you won’t be buying them socks in the future).  The difference is that online, the social ritual of unboxing becomes one that is shared with potentially thousands of strangers rather than your direct social circle. 

Whatever the platform, unboxing is a simple format. The creator opens packages on camera and shows off the items inside, describing how they feel or look. Perhaps they express enthusiasm or scepticism about the new thing, or test it out. The video ends before we get to see how well it lasts, or what happened to all the packaging.

“I watch a lot of lifestyle content – unboxing, day in the life, what [people] have been buying – because that entertains me,” Jayne says. “Then I put that in my own content as well.”

She thinks that unboxing videos are popular because it’s a way to share the sense of anticipation that is key to online shopping. “It’s not like buying things from a store five minutes away – the effect of waiting for it to come in that mail, unboxing, seeing the packaging, that’s what makes it entertaining to open.”

Unboxing makes watching other people have stuff you don’t a fun imagination exercise Photo: Getty Images

But the idea of packaging being entertaining is relatively novel, and created by the reality of shopping online meaning you don’t see what you’re getting first. When you buy something in-person, you have the chance to hold the item and see what it looks like, or to try it on if it’s clothing or shoes. Packaging is designed to display the object and make it look attractive. But if the item has already been exhibited at its best possible angle in the window of the internet, then the packaging is firstly a practical consideration to make sure it isn’t damaged in transit, and secondly a signal about what kind of item might be inside. 

“Oh, the packaging is so cute,” Emily Barr says, over rustles, as she unpacks a purchase in a recent TikTok. Several “cute” additions – a badge, a sticker – tumble out of the plastic, revealing a custom-stamped tissue paper. Barr is almost embarrassed to admit why she first started posting on TikTok. “It sounds stupid, but I saw all these people getting free stuff, and I thought ‘I want to get free stuff’,” the Otago University student says. “Around last year I started realising it was something I could be part of.”

It’s worked – kind of. She now has nearly 3,000 followers, and regularly gets thousands of views on her videos, with the occasional viral hit. That’s enough eyeballs that influencer-first brands have come offering free stuff, although the approaches are infrequent – she might have two or three brands reach out one month, then nothing for weeks and weeks. But there’s a difference between free and wanted things: Barr has found that the selection of items that influencers can choose from are often more limited than a brand’s mainstream products, which means she has received and made videos about items that she knows she’ll never use.  

In between studying for her commerce degree and working part-time, Barr watches TikTok.  As we talk, she finds her Screen Time from the previous week and discovers that she spent nearly 13 hours on TikTok over the last week. Those videos have given her time to contemplate packaging. “You don’t see the packaging in store as much, obviously,” she says. “Like when they wrap it in tissue paper, you think ‘that’s a bit bougie’. Online, you see people unboxing things and there are boxes within boxes, which has this luxury feel.”

The packaging, in other words, is integral to the anticipation bound up in a new item. “You watch other people unbox things and you buy into it,” Jayne says. “But it can be a bit misleading – I’ve had some packages arrive with fun things and little bits and pieces but I didn’t like the actual product at all.”

Good-quality packaging often ends up sticking around. Brands realise this isn’t new, either; there’s a reason those sturdy biscuit tins and chocolate boxes get used for decades, providing free advertising on the way. During the Great Depression, flour mills in the US realised that with fabric in short supply, people were using flour sacks to make clothing, and they started printing them to make them nicer to wear. 

a blue cadbury roses box in the old style
Packaging like Cadbury Roses were iconic long before TikTok made unboxing a new genre

Barr reckons that most people have had the experience of receiving something expensive in a particularly nice box – luxury skincare, a phone – and keeping the packaging, just because it feels weird to throw away an object associated with something so expensive. Branding can make even an empty box an object of desire. “I keep the better boxes, when they’re made of that hard cardboard,” she says. If she is ever able to afford designer clothing, she knows she’ll be keeping the packaging – a mentality clearly shared by Trade Me sellers who shill Chanel paper bags and Prada cloth cases, the designer object proxy in its packaging. 

The imagination of wealth embedded in unboxing videos hasn’t escaped Jayne, either. “When people unbox expensive things, like Gucci, I’m in awe,” she says. “I haven’t experienced that myself, but it’s a way of knowing what that’s like.” 

a brown skinned woman with dark hair smiling into the camera on a sunny day
Emma Roma Jayne enjoys sharing her enthusiasm for products with others (Image: supplied)

Because so much shopping now takes place in private, packaging is a way that brands can get attention in public-by-proxy, by being eye-catching online. “We aim to make a box itself part of the brand experience,” says Kim Worthy, the design lead at a company called Baseline, which makes custom boxes for businesses among other design services. “We make the unboxing special for our customers; each order is uniquely packaged with cardboard, paper tape and a little note.” 

The hope is that beautiful boxes will be kept or regifted, reducing waste. Baseline has custom order sizes and sustainably sourced cardboard – but the fact remains that packaging is often more decorative than functional, about as useful as wrapping paper. That’s no doubt a noble intention, and many people do keep boxes – not least because the original packaging can be an excellent way to increase the value of an item you’re reselling. Still: so much of the cardboard and plastic in which things arrive at our houses encased end up in the bin, sooner or later. You only need so many boxes, and they’re cheap enough to produce that no one is worrying too much about returning them. 

Most people know this, at some abstract level, but the recycling truck comes and whisks away the evidence before they need to think too hard about accumulating stuff. The enjoyment of receiving packages is such that multiple brands now offer “cases of crap”, with random assortments of unsold items bundled in a box, advertised explicitly as being cheap, and maybe not something you even want. Mystery boxes, now offered by hundreds of companies, also extend the concept: the point is that you don’t know what is inside, and the enigma only makes these items more entertaining to unbox. 

“[Waste] is the real downside of social media marketing,” Barr says. “You see big influencers with 20 packages of PR stuff for the week, they’re not going to use any of that, and you can only give away so much to friends and family.” She’s still a small fish in the big sea of digital influencing. “The market is saturated with small influencers,” she says. She’s not worried by the waste she herself produces, but the thoughts of piles of unused objects and their coverings still makes her uneasy. 

“People look to influencers because they live a lifestyle that looks desirable,” Jayne says. The process of unboxing, accumulating items in pretty packaging, is part of that desire. She likes enthusing about her latest items, and her audience does too. “I just want to create videos about products I’m authentically excited for.”

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National needs to go straight for the social media companies. (Image: Archi Banal)
National needs to go straight for the social media companies. (Image: Archi Banal)

OPINIONOpinionDecember 7, 2023

I’m a high school student. Here’s why National’s phone ban is a bad idea

National needs to go straight for the social media companies. (Image: Archi Banal)
National needs to go straight for the social media companies. (Image: Archi Banal)

National’s ban on phones in schools is poorly researched, won’t work and misses the real problem, argues high-schooler Caspar Levack.

On a typical weekday, I wake up, hurriedly get ready, and rush off to school, barely making it there in time. At this point, because I haven’t had the chance yet, I check the news on my phone. For the first few minutes of my first-period class, I read the headlines across a few websites, maybe an article or two, then close my phone and get on with work. 

It’s fine. My teachers are fine with it, I stay up-to-date, and the world is otherwise unchanged. But our brave, shiny new government has plans to end this tyranny of high schoolers reading the news.

Many schools have already restricted or banned phone usage during the day; my school is not among these. Currently, students are welcome to use their phones during breaks, but are discouraged from using them during class time. Of course there are exceptions, but most phone usage at school is relatively innocuous. My employed friends use their phones to confirm shifts with their bosses; I often check my emails; a family member might text a random anecdote; or, you know, we check the time. 

Some students do use social media during class, and I agree there are some issues to unpack there. But ultimately, if the teacher thinks you are being distracted by your phone during class, they will tell you to turn it off. And if phones are getting out of control and becoming a school-wide problem, those schools can ban them. 

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Gabi Lardies
— Staff writer

I really do empathise with school staff dealing with a cohort of students who are completely unengaged with learning. But National’s policy assumes this is happening at all schools and with all students, which from personal experience is just not the case. Again, if phones are a systemic problem at individual schools, they can already ban them.

So what does National’s policy actually say? On its website, there are just under 600 words written about the policy, of which only about 100 are about the policy itself and the action that needs to be taken. The rest of the text is a mix of complaints about Labour’s handling of education and platitudes about its importance.

In the 100 words of the policy containing the meat, there’s reference to a UNESCO report which forms the basis of National’s claim that phones are causing a decline in academic achievement and therefore need to be banned. The problem, however, is that UNESCO’s report doesn’t reach this conclusion. In fact, the report is very careful not to suggest a blanket ban. 

What UNESCO actually argues is that, although banning phones may sometimes be necessary for specific schools, the best approach is to carefully integrate the technology in class so that kids learn about both the benefits and risks of phone use, in a way that helps them understand when and where it’s appropriate to use them. 

Not the end of the world. (Photo: Klaus Vedfelt/Getty)

National’s policy also refers to a World Economic Forum article, itself based on the same UNESCO report, but with an alarming and inaccurate headline: “UNESCO calls for a ban on phones in schools. Here’s why.” Given that the UNESCO report is 500 pages long, you can imagine a lot of people just reading this headline and getting the false impression it justifies National’s policy. But a Swedish study found that their country’s blanket ban of phones in schools had not had any positive impact on student performance. In an effort to justify their policy, National cites a report that doesn’t support their arguments and which actively calls for a different approach to management of technology in schools. 

But even if National’s policy were evidence-based (we can but wish), what about the details about how it will be implemented? Two points are worth bringing up here. Firstly, National MPs have said that, in the absence of phones, parents and guardians can still contact their child through the school office, which is how things were done pre-cellphone, and which worked fine.

However, I can think of many cases where the school office really doesn’t need to know about the conversation between a student and their parent. For example, if a parent wants to contact their child to tell them a doctor’s appointment has been rescheduled, currently they can just text them. With a cellphone ban, the school must act as a middleman, invading the privacy of the student just to relay the message. 

Secondly, National has proposed exemptions for students with learning or health challenges who could benefit from phone access. I like this detail, but worry that it runs the risk of othering these students, who without a ban would blend right in.

The policy makes no distinction between primary, intermediate, and secondary schools. I can’t comment on the situation of phone usage in primary and intermediate. There’s potentially more of an argument to be made about phone harm there, but I’m not a child development expert, I’m just a youth. I can only comment on my experience as a high school student, where the ban should definitely not apply.

I asked a number of my peers about this policy and how they used their phones at school and, ignoring one un-publishable comment about the National Party, many shared positive benefits, such as taking photos of notes the teacher has written or listening to music with friends during lunch. While I understand the appeal of this policy, as phones can be harmful, they’re also wildly useful. 

There’s also the problem with implementing and enforcing this policy. I can’t imagine my teachers trying particularly hard to enforce it: it’s illegal to vape on the premises of a school, and that is a way more serious social concern, yet students do it in their thousands. If the Ministry of Education can’t enforce a ban on vapes, how can anyone expect students to respect a ban on phones? The policy says it’s up to individual schools to decide how to enforce it, which is not how I want my underpaid teachers and school staff to spend their time. 

If National wants to improve the lives of teenagers while also reining in technology, there is absolutely a path there: go after the social media companies. National MPs and much of the media commentators often conflate phone use with social media use. The latter is legitimately harmful; it’s designed to be addictive and fritters the attention spans of its users. Properly regulating social media companies would be popular policy that makes the government look really good. Why not do that instead?

If National wants to support young people, why is it ignoring the constructive arguments young people provide, and failing to deal with the real problem? National’s gung-ho ban is shallow thinking.

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