Back-to-school shopping used to be as simple as stocking up on pens, pencils and three-ring binders.
But these days, the shopping list has grown longer, and more expensive, as demands on students — from peer pressure to classroom requirements — have gotten more onerous.
Now, students don't just pick up the essentials to study the 3 Rs, they also pick up items like laptop computers, iPhones and iPads that enable them to keep up with friends and family, surf the Web, and download documents for school.
Retail sales for back-to-school electronics items were up 8.1 percent last month over July 2009, according to Kathy Grannis, spokeswoman for the National Retail Federation. And that's despite the still sluggish economy.
Theresa Illich, 18, of Hampstead, with the help of mom and dad, bought her first laptop computer earlier this summer — a MacBook Pro. She plans to study music education at the University of New Hampshire and hopes the Mac will help her with her studies.
"A lot of people had them," she said. "I also got a printer and an iPod free with it. It's more artsy, for graphics, and good for music composition."
At $1,100, it's a fairly pricey back-to-school item, but one which most college students and many high school kids can't do without.
"It's not mandatory, but it makes life 10 times easier," said Jessica Monte, 19, a sophomore at UMass-Lowell who was shopping last week at the Staples store on Route 114 in North Andover. Midway through her freshman year, her father bought her a Toshiba laptop.
"It's been very useful," she said. "You can refer to Web pages the professor is talking about, take notes in class, write papers. It may not be needed for high school, but I'd recommend anyone going to college to get a laptop."
Netbooks are hot sellers
More and more, retail experts and store managers say, students are purchasing items that traditionally would have sat on the shelves during the back-to-school shopping season, which now pretty much runs from June through August.
According to the National Retail Federation, spending for students heading back to school this fall, from kindergarten through college, is expected to reach about $55.1 billion, serving as the second biggest consumer spending event for retailers behind the winter holidays.
About 23 percent of that — or around $12.7 billion — will be spent in electronics stores.
According to an American Express Spending and Saving Tracker, 34 percent of parents say electronics are on their shopping list. Of that group, 18 percent said the single largest purchase will be a new computer or laptop, costing them an average of $530.
That trend was certainly in evidence last weekend in Massachusetts, when the sales tax holiday saw many people doing their back-to-school shopping.
"We had a lot of electronic items move on the sales tax holiday, including laptops, desktop computers, iPads," said Bill Rennie, vice president of the Retailers Association of Massachusetts. "Where the sales tax holiday fell this year, with a lot of people going back to school before Labor Day, everything got moved up. There were a lot of ads and promotions around that. If you were in the market for a computer or laptop, it was a good time to buy."
At the Andover Radio Shack in Shawsheen Plaza, demand has been high for mini-laptops, Assistant Store Manager Steve Bowen said.
"There was a girl in here Tuesday who is going to NECCO (Northern Essex Community College in Haverhill), and she was looking at the smaller netbooks," he said. "A lot of people like them for their portability."
Not to mention the cost. At just $279, it's an electronic item within many students' budgets.
Marc Rialdi, store team leader at the Target on Route 28 in Salem, also said personal notebooks are a hot seller this year.
"It's not a full-blown laptop," he said. "But we had some special sales earlier this summer, and they kept selling out."
More phones for youngsters
Rialdi said other popular back-to-school items are iPods and iPod docking stations for college dorm rooms.
"Of course, the biggest thing every year is the high-end calculator," he said. "The Texas Instruments brand, required by most math teachers, runs $100-plus."
Robyn Brodeur, a 17-year-old North Andover High School junior, was buying a graphing calculator for more than $100 at Staples on Route 114 because math teachers require it.
Phones, meanwhile, are being sold to younger and younger students as working parents need a way to communicate with their children when they get home from school or are on their way to after-school sports or activities.
"They're great for texting and e-mailing," Rialdi said. "Kids can keep in contact with their parents."
Another big seller this year has been the Flip Video, a speciality item that enables the user to easily film their friends and then upload the clip to YouTube or Facebook.
"It's a hot item for everyone from tweens to college age," Rialdi said.
For Hayley Brown of Londonderry, who is entering her freshman year at Providence College, the hot item was a dorm-room refrigerator — a pink and black one that she had been coveting but couldn't find until she and her mother began combing the aisles at Target.
"I had to get the pink," the former Trinity High School student said. "They said they were sold out, but we found it behind a bunch of other stuff."
Brown is also heading off to school armed with an arsenal of high-tech gadgets, including a laptop, a new printer, a cell phone and a mini-TV — further evidence that pencils and paper alone just don't cut it anymore.
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