I have shopped on Temu a couple of times - primarily driven by curiosity. My orders were small and the experience was good enough mainly because I had no performance expectations. J had never heard of Temu and now that she knows about it, has no desire to buy from there. In an ideal world, we would be able to buy direct from an artisan who makes things by hand using skills they have learned over many  generations. Each item would be unique and created with time and care. These things would be useful to us and be made in a sustainable way. We would only buy the things we actually need and intend to use for many year and even pass them to the next generation - there would be no wanton, excessive consumption.  

These wonderful things would all be sold at a fair price that creates a way for the traditional way of way a viable and a productive one for the artisan. While we may all be ever so well-intentioned but that is bit far away from the realm of reality. The truth is doing good in the world is often more expensive and complicated than we have capacity for. There is a significant gap between what we need versus what we want - the bulk of the online Shopping is fueled by want not need. It is why the likes of Temu thrive - they address the wants in the cheapest way possible. We get to choose between feeling good about not being frivolous spenders or not exploiting cheap foreign labor. We are closer to the former than the later - so Temu wins again. It makes sense that it is popular with boomers but the reasons described

Bloomberg cites a professor of consumer culture who suggests that one reason might be that older people are less sophisticated internet shoppers, and so they are dazzled by Temu's roulette wheel of discounts when you open the app and other gamified discounting