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Meg Locker, 28, didn’t realize that she was spending a lot of time and money on shopping. Last January, while cleaning, she tried to take stock of how many bottles of face and body lotion she had and was shocked to see how many unopened products there were. She began to take inventory of hauls from other shopping trips and noticed that not all of her clothing fit in her closet; she had to step over tote bags from previous shopping trips. “It’s terrifying,” she says. “It wasn’t until it was all piled up that I was like, ‘I could literally go years without needing to buy something.’”
Like many people in their 20s, Locker was sold a lifestyle by social media content creators, who often have much larger budgets than she does (and probably some brand deals). Images of aesthetically placed rows of body scrubs and other beauty and hygiene products abound online, punctuated by enthusiastic endorsements of a new “holy grail” product you must have. Content creators show off what feels like a never-ending wardrobe, with no outfits repeated on their perfectly curated Instagram feeds.
An elevated lifestyle populated by an abundance of products has become so normal on social media that many young people like Locker think they should try to replicate it — only to find their homes filled to the brim and their bank accounts drained. But these trends are impacting more than just the space and finances of consumers: Overconsumption may be impacting our mental health.
Cathrine Jansson-Boyd, a professor of consumer psychology at Anglia Ruskin University in England, explains that though we don’t personally know the content creators on social media, we still compare ourselves to them. This, in part, drives some of the impulse to buy more things than we actually need, even if we don’t have the same lifestyle as the creators we follow online. We feel like we could become closer to them or feel better about our lives if we have similar outfits or gadgets.
“It’s got to do with our self-worth sometimes,” Jansson-Boyd tells Teen Vogue. “We are very social creatures and we compare ourselves against others all the time. And the fact that we engage in this social comparison, we’re comparing upwards to someone we kind of think is, for whatever reason, superior to us.”
Locker admits that she used shopping to try and emulate influencers she admired to soothe negative feelings. She’d have a rough week at work and would spend time unwinding by heading to a department store. “Then before I know it, I’m spending $300, essentially on junk,” she laments. “Some of it is products that I’m still using, but some of it is also ridiculous home decor items that they have right at the entry.”
Kelsey Matheson-Daly, 33, posted on Threads at the end of 2024 that she wanted to stop overconsuming in 2025. She says she did it to hold herself accountable after seeing that she was buying too much clothing online. Like Locker, Matheson-Daly found clothes in the back of her closet with the tags still on. “It’s so easy to purchase with minimal clicks, and our access to things that other people have is limitless because of the algorithm and scrolling,” she tells Teen Vogue via email.
But fashion content and quick checkouts don’t just make it easier to buy more, they have enabled Matheson-Daly to rationalize impulse purchases. “Instead of looking in my closet, where I have plenty of outfits that I could put together to feel more professional in a work-from-home setting, I would purchase new items to ‘fix’ the issue,” she says.
Anna Lembke, MD, a professor and chief of the Addiction Medicine Dual Diagnosis Clinic at Stanford University and the author of Dopamine Nation, explains that shopping does make people feel better; however, that joy is temporary. “We know from human brain-imaging studies that monetary rewards light up the same reward pathway as drugs and alcohol, so we can infer that shopping also activates our reward pathway,” says Dr. Lembke. “It’s very common for people to shop as a way to change the way they feel, to de-stress, to decrease anxiety or depression.”
