TikTok isn’t just feeding social media addiction. It’s now enabling shopping addiction, too.
Between January and October, the 170 million Americans who are on TikTok spent more than $10 billion on TikTok Shop — double the amount spent last year over the same time span.
Sam Reddy was irritated by TikTok Shop when it first started popping up in her feed a year and a half ago, but very quickly got hooked.
“At first, it was annoying, but then, with all the ads and people talking about the products, it became FOMO,” the 40-year-old from Baltimore told The Post. “You see people talking about [an item], and so you want to get it… Inevitably, you go from watching TikTok to looking at a product.”
Sam Reddy has spent $3,000 on TikTok Shop in just the past six months. Courtesy of Sam Reddy
Reddy makes corsets for a living, so it all started with buying corset boning on TikTok Shop. But then she got hooked on “little food items,” and was soon buying so many trendy snacks — like Dubai chocolate bars and Pholicious Pho noodles — that her cabinets began to overflow.
She has spent $3,000 in just the past six months and, at one point, owed $1,000 each to the buy-now-pay-later platforms Affirm and Klarna.
Reddy bought so many trendy snacks — like Dubai chocolate bars and Pholicious Pho noodles — that her cabinets began to overflow. TikTok Shop
“It’s spending I wouldn’t have done otherwise,” she said. “You don’t even realize when it’s happening, that is what’s so concerning. You’re in this world of shopping, or you’re in watching video mode, so you’re not really pausing and making a conscious decision to consume.”
TikTok Shop is an integrated one-stop shop that’s transforming the social media app into an e-commerce platform. Ads show up in a user’s video feed, and purchases can be made seamlessly — unlike on Instagram, where users need to enter a new browser to make a purchase.
“It does seem to be this kind of perfect storm to unleash some pretty big spending,” Scott Rick, associate professor of marketing at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, told The Post. “It’s this fun space with novel products from people you trust, and we tend to trust people more than we trust companies nowadays.”
TikTok Shop’s interface looks a lot like Amazon and features flash sales and “premium offers.”
The TikTok Shop tab resembles Amazon’s interface and is filled with all sorts of clothing, beauty and food items. TikTokers doubling as “affiliates” push products in videos for a small commission.
Carrie Rattle, a Westchester based financial therapist, said that the personable affiliate testimonials make TikTok Shop even more enticing. Some have called it Gen Z’s QVC.
“When you’ve got a live advocate for the product, it’s like an immediate social proof for somebody, a walking talking testimonial,” Rattle told The Post. “Sometimes they have an engaging story about where the product is from or how they use it, so it’s a bit of shoppertainment.”
Reddy regrets about half of the purchases she’s made, especially bras that have been very low quality. She also feels like the social media platform she once loved is becoming unrecognizable.
Samantha Gashi estimates she has spent $10,000 on TikTok shop — and often ends up regretting her purchases. Courtesy of Samantha Gashi
Samantha Gashi has accumulates piles of products from TikTok shop that she hasn’t even opened yet. Courtesy of Samantha Gashi
“Every other video is an advertisement,” Reddy said. “There’s always a little orange box at the very left hand corner. At this point, TikTok isn’t even an entertainment app. It’s literally becoming a shopping app, like it’s the next Temu.”
A representative for TikTok did not respond to a request for comment.
One big-time spender is Samanta Gashi, who said she wasn’t into online shopping until TikTok Shop started bombarding her with ads a year ago.
“It’s easy access. Everything just pops right up. There’s so many ads, and then the shop is just right there,” Gashi, a 33-year-old influencer and restaurant owner in Pennsylvania, told The Post.
Users regularly post videos of themselves with massive hauls from TikTok Shop. @lisi.shopsj/TikTok
She estimates she’s served up an ad “every third scroll” — which adds up fast, considering she spends six to seven hours a day on the app.
Gashi quickly found herself buying clothes and beauty products and, before she knew it, had spent $10,000 on at least 200 items.
“I do have a lot of products that I have not used, and I don’t even know why I bought them,” she admitted. “Most of them don’t fit. Most of them are bad quality. Everybody’s just getting scammed right and left.”
Financial therapist Lindsay Bryan-Podvin says that it’s hard for consumers to discern ads from content on TikTok.
Financial therapist Lindsay Bryan-Podvin said users like Reddy and Gashi are getting pulled in so easily because the ads are so seamlessly integrated into the interface.
“TikTok creators will be doing a ‘day in the life’ video, and all of the products used in their ‘day in the life’ are on sale,” Podvin explained. “It’s just so tricky to discern: When am I being targeted for shopping versus when am I being entertained? It’s not like it was 15, 20 years ago, when you would turn on the TV, and you could tell, ‘I’m watching a show, oh, and now here’s the ad break.’”
Shopping habits are hard to break, but Professor Rick, author of “Tightwads and Spendthrifts,” said putting up as many barriers as possible is the key to freedom.
“The ideal thing would be to delete all of your saved information — any credit cards that are saved,” he advised. “The way to slow down spending is to put up friction and speed bumps and make people click through a bunch of screens and re-enter their credit card information and slow everything down.”
