Current Sociology

Please welcome our Sociologist of the Month for November 2025, Julia Cook (University of Newcastle, Australia). Her article for Current Sociology Youth and the consumption of credit, co-authored with David Farrugia, Kate Senior, Steven Threadgold, Julia Coffey, Kate Davies, Adriana Haro and Barrie Shannon is Free Access this month.

Julia Cook

Could you please tell us about yourself? How did you come to your field of study?

J. Cook: My research focuses on the sociology of youth, housing and finance. My research addressing young people’s experiences of finance came about in part through driving around the city that I live in. I was surprised by the number of shopfronts occupied by payday loan providers and inspired to start looking into what the physical and digital consumer credit landscape looked like for young adults living in this area. My colleagues and I quickly found that the digital finance landscape was much more relevant to young adults’ experiences, and started focusing our research on financial technologies (fintech) such as buy now pay later services. We have now been working in this area for over 5 years, with our work spanning digital consumer credit, buy now pay later regulation, gambling apps, and finfluencers (finance influencers).

You have published with us before. What prompted you to research the area of your most recent article, "Youth and the consumption of credit"? Can you tell us a bit about your co-authors?

J. Cook: This article emerged from our team’s first study of young people and finance. This project sought to map the financial products that young people were engaging with, and to understand how they were viewed and experienced by young people.

This article was very much a team effort. Although all of the authors were at the same institution (The University of Newcastle, Australia) at the time, several have now moved to other institutions. David Farrugia is currently at Deakin University (Australia) and is completing an Australian Research Council (ARC) fellowship on young people’s experiences of work and citizenship. Kate Senior is currently directing the Institute for Regional Futures at the University of Newcastle. Steven Threadgold is directing the Newcastle Youth Studies Centre at the University of Newcastle, and is leading a new ARC-funded project on young people’s use of fintech that stems directly from this program of work (Julia Coffey and I are also investigators on this project). Julia Coffey is currently completing an ARC-funded project on young people’s selfie editing practices. Kate Davies is Research Director at the Law and Justice Foundation of NSW, and remains connected to the University of Newcastle as an Honorary staff member. Adriana Haro and Barrie Shannon were research assistants on this project. Adriana is now Project Officer at the Centre of Excellence for Equity in Higher Education and the University of Newcastle, and Barrie is undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of South Australia.

What do you see as the key findings of your article?

J. Cook: Our article shows that young people make a distinction between so-called ‘good debts’ and ‘bad debts’. The former are those that assist them in progressing towards the normative milestones denoting full, independent adulthood (i.e. student loans to allow them to gain qualifications, a mortgage debt to allow them to enter into home ownership), while the latter are those associated primarily with consumer goods (i.e. the use of credit cards to purchase clothing).

We also found that although the most commonly used financial product across our sample was buy now pay later (BNPL), our participants did not necessarily view this product as a form of credit. They were more likely to instead view it as a way to pay, and to distinguish it from other, comparatively serious, credit products (such as credit cards and personal loans). However, this view of BNPL was temporally contingent, with participants beginning to experience these products as sources of debt when their repayments started to accumulate. Drawing on these findings, we argue that by using BNPL technologies, young people are engaged as financialised subjects through a mode of calculation entirely at odds with the logic of long-term investment that shapes the distinction between youth and adulthood as discussed above. Rather than accumulating value over biographical time, BNPL technologies enact a mode of calculation in which days and weeks are figured in terms of financial obligations that may not be considered or defined as debt at the moment of purchase.

What are the wider social implications of your research in the current social climate? How do you think things will change in the future?

J. Cook: This research was conducted prior to the beginning of debates about regulating buy now pay later products as credit in Australia. We used the findings of the wider study informing this article to write a submission to Treasury’s ‘Regulating Buy Now Pay Later in Australia’ options paper, contributing to the decision to regulate buy now pay later under an amended version of the Credit Act and increase the consumer protections associated with it. This regulation came into effect in mid-2025, and we are yet to see its full impact. However, we expect that this regulatory change – which will lead to changes in how users interact with buy now pay later services – will lead to greater public understanding that buy now pay later products are credit products rather than just a way to pay. This is a clear area where further research is needed, along with research considering how changes in the way buy now pay later is regulated will impact those who are using it to meet everyday expenses and may find their access to it changed.

Do you have any links to images, documents or other pieces of research which build on or add to the article? Or a suggested reading list?

J. Cook: Definitely, here are some other articles that we’ve published from this program of research. We have several more currently under review, so more to come!

• Cook, J., Davies, K., Farrugia, D., Threadgold, S., Coffey, J., Senior, K., Haro, A. & Shannon, B. (2023). Buy now pay later services as a way to pay: credit consumption and the depoliticization of debt. Consumption Markets & Culture, 26(4), 245–257.
• Threadgold, S., Coffey, J., Farrugia, D., & Cook, J. (2024). Indebtpending: an ugly feeling of youthful financialised futurity. Journal of Youth Studies, 1–16.
• Davies, K., Cook, J., Threadgold, S., Farrugia, D., Coffey, J., Matthews, B. & Healy, J. (2024). “Winging it”: How youth workers navigate debt with young people. Children and Youth Services Review, 163, 107771-107771.
• Coffey, J., Senior, K., Haro, A., Farrugia, D., Threadgold, S., Cook, J., Davies, K. & Shannon, B. (2024). Embodying debt: youth, consumer credit and its impacts for wellbeing. Journal of Youth Studies, 27(5): 685-705.
• Threadgold, S., Shannon, B., Haro, A., Cook, J., Davies, K., Coffey, J., Farrugia, D., Matthews, B., Healy, J. & Burrows, R. (2024). Buy Now, Pay Later technologies and the gamification of debt in the financial lives of young people. Journal of Cultural Economy, 18(1), 52–67.