Two months into “No Buy 2025,” the latest iteration of a grassroots movement that encourages people to curb their consumerist tendencies, the U.S. Census Bureau released figures showing that online sales continue to set records, rising by 8.1% in 2024.
“Online sales of retail products have doubled in the last 10 years,” Kevin Ketels, associate professor at the Mike Ilitch School of Business at Wayne State University, told Yahoo News. “COVID exacerbated the desire of people to make online purchases. Since then, companies have become very, very sophisticated at marketing to folks online.”
On Friday, many people around the world will participate in a “no buy day,” a 24-hour economic blackout that organizers say targets corporate greed by cutting back on unnecessary purchases.
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“For our entire lives, they have told us we have no choice, that this is just how things are, that we have to accept these insane prices, the corporate greed, the billionaire tax breaks, all while we struggle just to get by,” John Schwarz, one of the leaders of the Feb. 28 “economic blackout,” said in a recent Instagram video. “For one day, we are going to finally turn the tables.”
‘Wanting to curb habitual, unconscious spending’
But the no-buy trend has been around for years and is motivated by multiple reasons. In 2019, Kim Butler, founder of the financial services and life insurance company Prosperity Thinkers, proclaimed 2019 to be a no-buy year for clothing and skin care products.
“I got tired of having stuff and I just decided that most of the stuff I was buying wasn’t really needed and it had become an absolute habit,” she said, adding, “I knew I needed to put a stop to it and I’m kind of a cold-turkey person, I guess.”
She and her husband live in a small Texas town and have come to rely on sites like Amazon to shop for many items, yet the ease of smartphone shopping also presented a “fox guarding the henhouse” dynamic that resulted in unhealthy habits when it came to certain product categories.
For Butler, no-buy challenges are “about wanting to curb habitual, unconscious spending.”
In the smartphone age, Ketels said, tech companies wield tremendous power over consumers.
“If you do a search anywhere, it seems like you will then see ads for those products almost instantaneously in your social media feeds and other places,” he said.
‘Online shopping addiction’
That bombardment of advertisements juiced by algorithms that feed users tailored content can cause big problems for many people. A 2023 study by researchers in Finland found that “low self-regulation in an online environment facilitates online shopping addiction, which further leads to dissatisfaction toward personal money management through indebtedness.”
Omaha, Neb., resident Melissa Welch, who makes a living helping people declutter their homes, said social media is supercharging impulse buying because of direct advertising as well as the role of influencers.
“Influencers are paid to promote things all the time, and because of the parasocial relationship we sometimes feel like, ‘OK, they’re our friend. So a friend is recommending this, therefore I should buy it,’” Welch said, adding, “A lot of the people who I’ve talked to who are interested in doing a no-buy, we discuss strategies like unfollowing influencers, unsubscribing from email marketing and stuff like that to actively resist and put up a buffer.”
Somewhat ironically, social media has also become the go-to place to find tips on how to succeed with a no-buy challenge.
Tracy Bassett, a real estate agent in Mansfield, Texas, said on Instagram that she and her husband had begun a No Buy 2025 challenge to pay down debt and to save for retirement and putting their son through college.
Her rules, she said, included canceling her Amazon Prime membership. “I will not be hopping on Amazon anymore to make purchases willy-nilly like I have been,” Bassett said, noting that she “will be adding no new subscriptions or memberships or apps to my phone.”
On her Instagram feed, Rebecca Sowden, a social media content creator and commissions analyst in Corona, Calif., also said she was motivated to join the no-buy bandwagon out of concerns about her financial security.
“I looked at the money I had put in retirement and I looked at my savings, and I thought, ‘Is this all that I’ve been able to save financially for myself? Is this really where we’re at?’” Sowden told Yahoo Life. “Because my closet is absolutely bursting at the seams.”
Sowden’s plan includes forgoing purchases of new clothing and shoes (unless shoes are completely worn out) as well as a ban on trying new makeup or skin care products, and she regularly documents her journey in Instagram posts, a practice that Butler says can be “a valuable tool.”
“We all need accountability buddies. Sometimes that can’t be our own family, for whatever reason,” Butler said. “I believe social media can create that community. It can be five people, it can be 5 million, it doesn’t really matter. It can help you become aware of your own unconscious behavior.”
But Butler also does set some cellphone parameters. “Make your phone go dark at a particular time of night. That makes it virtually impossible to shop because you can’t see the colors of the clothes,” she said. “I also do not allow myself, other than a 10-minute period of time, to be on Instagram, because it’s so easy to shop from there.”
Countering the ‘dopamine response’
With our phones and social media activity now fully integrated into daily life, coming up with specific steps to cut back on online consumerism is crucial, Welch said.
“I have total empathy for everyone who has a clutter problem or a shopping problem,” Welch said. “People shop for many different reasons. Sometimes it’s a stress response, sometimes it’s a mental health issue, sometimes it’s a dopamine response.”
Welch advises shopaholic clients to increase the amount of time they spend watching movies with a spouse, reading, or playing games with others instead of spending time on a cellphone at the end of each day.
“I think cellphones have made shopping much more prevalent. Certainly there are some people who enjoy shopping and take themselves physically to a store to buy things in person. I just think it’s way more common because our phones are so connected and we are seeing all these advertisements,” she said.
While Ketels applauds the aims of no-buy challenges, he’s not entirely convinced that the outcomes will prove life-changing for most people.
“Anyone who does it and is disciplined about it, that’s great, but I’m skeptical that there will be large-scale changes in society and our addiction to instant gratification from online purchases,” he said.