As Thanksgiving comes to an end, avid shoppers look forward to Black Friday. When online shopping wasn’t as popular, people would line up outside of stores for hours on Black Friday. TV’s would be marked down to such low prices it was shocking to customers. But what is Black Friday like now?

Some websites want to draw attention for their Black Friday event so they create sales that are worth it to customers. Edikted is a store that has gotten more popular over the years with teenage girls. Their Black Friday sale this year was 60%-90% off. Evry Jewels dropped prices of jewelry to $3.99 across their platform. Old Navy and Gap was 50% off sitewide.

However, these attractive online sales mean in store purchases aren’t as economical. Several stores have buy-one-get-one free deals or 20%-30% off, which oftentimes only knocks off the cost of shipping. Going to malls on Black Friday creates chaos because clothes are sold out in most sizes, so it isn’t worth going. Traffic near Tysons corner this year backed up for more than two hours. Some stores such as Abercrombie had a sale of 25-30% off and Skims had a sale of 30% off. Although it’s still a sale, it’s not as attractive as in store sales used to be. 

Stores now start their sales weeks before Friday which undermines the whole idea of Black Friday. Black Friday used to attract large crowds. Intense fights over an item like a TV or a computer weren’t uncommon because there was no online sale to replace it. The sale would end that day and online shopping was nothing like what it is today. Crowds would camp outside stores overnight to ensure they would at least make it into the store. 

So is Black Friday actually worth it? No. The sales are nothing compared to what they used to be and it ruins the purpose of Black Friday.