Marissa Verdon, Staff Writer

While you might hear more about it during Christmas or Cyber Monday, online shopping has become the new standard for shopping.

According to Statista, over 215 million Americans are online shoppers. With online shopping putting brick-and-mortar stores like Toys R Us out after refusing to adapt to the market, we asked students why they think online shopping has become the new craze.

Sophomore Regina Hanks does a lot of online shopping on Amazon, where she can use her Prime membership giving her premium express service. With Prime offering students a 50 percent discount, it becomes enticing for some.

“Online shopping is convenient, especially with Amazon Prime where you can get things delivered to your door in a day or two,” Hanks said. “You can find such a large variety of items that you’d never see in stores, especially in a smaller city like Utica, where there aren’t as many stores bigger cities have.”

While students shop for items such as bluetooth speakers, chargers and more appliances, clothing brands are another big draw in the online market.

Junior Berina Karajkovic knows online shopping all too well as she shops from stores such as Lulus, Express and Fashionnova.

“There’s so many online boutique stores and so many options,” Karajkovic said. “I know my size pretty well, as long as I pay attention to the sizing chart, I don’t have a problem with things not fitting too often.”

When Karajkovic was in high school, she bought multiple dresses online to see which one she liked the most and then easily returned the ones she did not wear.

Karajkovic is not the only one who loves a good return policy. According to PR News Wire, 40 percent of shoppers buy multiple items with the intent to return everything except their favorites.

While some are excited to shop on online, students like freshman McKenzie Good are skeptical.

“I avoid shopping as much as possible,” McKenzie said. “I don’t want to over do it. I see my friends buy so many things on Amazon just because they thought it was cool, and then they never use it.”

Good does not find it necessary to shop online and “waste money.”

Freshman Ian McAllister was very concerned about falling down the shopping rabbit hole by using online stores.

“Shopping online is a dangerous thing for me to do, so I avoid it as much as possible,” McAllister said. “Going to a physical store and paying with physical money lets me keep better track of my money.”

Matt Viera is hesitant about online sellers after recent data breaches have compromised consumer data. A study on Ponemon Institute shows that the average cost of a data breach around $3.62 million.

“I’ve never bought anything online before,” Viera said. “I don’t like the idea of putting my card on the internet, it doesn’t feel safe to me. Especially with the rise of data breaches, I would just rather buy whatever I need in person.”