Facing Fashion’s Shopping Addiction Problem

Sifat Jahan has always loved to shop.

Growing up as an immigrant from Bangladesh in a predominantly white US suburb, she watched her peers regularly receive new clothes for Christmas and their birthdays; financially, her family wasn’t able to do the same. Once she had her own income, shopping became a means to fit in with her peers. Soon enough, she was hunting for the perfect unique vintage find to stand out.

When the pandemic hit, with nothing to do but sit at home and scroll, Jahan’s shopping ramped up. She quickly accumulated a five-figure credit card debt. Looking at her closet, she said, would “disgust me more than it brought me joy.”

“It was more of an identity crisis than anything. I didn’t know who I was,” she said. “Buying something gave me the feeling of ‘Okay, now I’ve made it.’ But that doesn’t last.”

She’s since discovered she’s hardly alone. Jahan now documents her struggle with what she calls a shopping addiction to nearly 30,000 followers on TikTok. Many share with her their own experiences with the compulsion to buy and the shame that inevitably follows.

Shopping addiction is not new, but the temptation to spend, and spend, and spend has never been greater. Instagram and TikTok provide endless scrolls of influencers recommending products, broken up by targeted ads. Making a purchase is nearly instantaneous, and buy now, pay later services postpone any financial repercussions.

Unlike drug, alcohol or gambling addiction, shopping addiction is not recognised as a disorder by the American Psychiatric Association, though self-diagnosed sufferers like Jahan describe similar symptoms, from crushing debt to deteriorating mental and physical health and broken relationships.

Still, without a standard definition, reliable data on shopping addictions’ prevalence is difficult to come by. But there is a growing body of evidence on how frictionless commerce may be affecting consumers: US credit card debt rose to a record $1.28 trillion in the fourth quarter, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which also found that Gen-Zers are more likely to max out their credit cards than previous generations.

“Today, you can be sitting in bed, and click, click, click. It’s more insidious,” said Avis Cardella, the author of the book “Spent: Memoirs of a Shopping Addict.” “If you’re someone who is susceptible to this behaviour or have a problem with your relationship to shopping, it’s become more difficult to navigate.”

Slowly, however, that conversation appears to be getting louder. Searches for shopping addiction have nearly doubled since 2020, according to Google Trends. Online, discussion around overconsumption is growing. On social media, users document “no buy” shopping hiatuses and seek out online courses and coaching to curb their spending.

The issue is also drawing attention from regulators and the legal system worldwide. In February, the European Union opened an investigation into fast fashion giants Shein and Temu over concerns about their allegedly addictive design. Last week, a jury found Meta and Google liable for harm caused by the addictive qualities of their platforms’ social media platforms. It’s not hard to imagine the same logic applying to retailers.

Much of e-commerce today is “designed to create a sense of urgency and effectively make it so that people bypass their better judgment,” said Delicia Hand, senior director, digital marketplace at the nonprofit Consumer Reports. “None of this really serves the consumer’s best interest; they’re entirely serving the companies’.”

Silence and Shame

While certain retail practices may be in regulators’ crosshairs, shopping addiction as a concept has a long way to go to be taken seriously. The problem is sometimes dismissed as a women’s issue – laughed off as “girl math” rather than being seen as a subject for study and treatment by the medical establishment. Shopping is also widely viewed as a net positive for society – strong retail sales signal a strong economy.

As well, society’s relationship with shopping has shifted. There’s a cachet that comes with owning a sold-out hoodie or carrying a viral lip gloss in your bag.

“Shopping is almost part of the cultural fabric of being a young person,” said Adam Leventhal, a professor at the University of Southern California and the director of the school’s Institute for Addiction Science. “Talking about a product and having that knowledge about it gives you more social standing than it did in the past.”

Like most addictions, there’s an emotional component. For people with shopping addiction, it’s less about filling your closet and more a never-ending journey to become an idealised version of themselves.

Seeing influencers on social media whose lives, for the most part, don’t appear too different from their followers, creates a further sense of disconnect.

“If I see Kim Kardashian on my feed, she’s very unrelatable to me, but when you see the person who looks like our neighbour, that’s a lot more attainable,” said Hannah Blass, a content creator and founder of The Style Audit, a program designed to help people tackle overspending tendencies. “It starts to feel normal that people are shopping and owning all these things, and that we should as well.”

Overcoming Overspending

Overcoming shopping addiction also brings unique challenges. While people don’t have to go to a bar or a casino, there’s no way to completely eliminate shopping from your life.

Recovering shopaholics often focus on changing their relationship with spending. Common tactics include unsubscribing from retailer emails and creating friction at checkout by removing payment information from apps. Blass recommends followers think more deeply about what they’re hoping to get out of a purchase, and even just say out loud to themselves “I don’t need to shop this sale” to help drive the message home. “No buy” periods are divisive: Blass said abstaining from unnecessary purchases for three months helped her kick her shopping addiction. Jahan found it akin to “starving” herself, which then prompted a relapse.

What many advocates ultimately want is for fashion to have a “big tobacco” moment, where the industry is held to account for practices that harm its customers. The recent verdict against Meta and Google begs the question of if that moment may come sooner rather than later.

Both are not officially recognised as a disease, “but that doesn’t mean it’s not a really big problem,” said Leventhal. “The same things that make social media addictive are not very different from what we see with shopping,”

When it comes to potential government action, there’s room for more regulation around what Hand calls “deceptive marketing” practices, like slot-machine-esque pop-ups, ultra-targeted marketing, countdown clocks or widgets that suggest additional purchases at check out. Data protection measures, like the EU’s GDPR and California’s CCPA, make it more difficult to taunt shoppers with potential purchases. The EU also put in place the an AI Act in 2024, which outlaws exploiting a consumers’ vulnerabilities to encourage sales. There have been attempts to crackdown on undisclosed sponsored content, too, though enforcement remains shaky.

Until more substantial measures are put in place, how much shopping is too much is left to shoppers to figure out.

Crystal Chen, a content creator and shopping coach who goes by the moniker “Slow Buy Club” believes that improving consumers’ marketing literacy is key to getting them to change their relationship with spending. That means understanding the messages brands are using in their own advertising, how it’s meant to hook a consumer and create that false urgency, and as well as explicitly cater to a consumer with their demographics.

“Once you see it, you can unsee it, and then you can make a more informed decision,” she said.