Why is everything getting worse?

Lesson overview

Warning: video and lesson contain strong language; may be unsuitable for some students

In this lesson, the students:

watch a comedy video with examples of enshittification
discuss the new term and its characteristics
learn the names of unethical business practises (planned obsolescence, shrinkflation etc.)
discuss the future of products and services.

This Discussion Brick can be a part of General English Courses as well as Business English and Marketing courses for adults.

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Discussion and vocabulary

The lesson plan focuses on discussing the issue of enshittification in current media. The students watch the informercial of Norwegian Consumer Council to define the idea in their own terms and see real-life examples. Then, they read about the official term and what its characteristcs are. In the vocabulary section, students match different names of common unethical business practises to definitions (e.g. planned obsolescence, shrinkflation, AI slop) and discuss them in the context of various services (i.e Google search, streaming, social media). The discussion is moved to some predictions about the future of different industries. Finally, the students can have some fun discussing different case studies and thinking of ideas to make them worse for users.

This lesson contains

a lesson plan for students in PDF for download (Student’s Brick)
a lesson plan for teachers with key and teaching notes in PDF for download (Teacher’s Brick)
an online presentation in Google Slides (Online Brick)
a link to an optional authentic material (video)