Users reveal how TikTok Shop spending has spiraled into a costly and mindless addiction.

10 December 2025

The social media shopping craze is out of control as users confess to spending thousands on TikTok Shop without ever using most of what they buy. In the last year the transformation of TikTok from a simple video-sharing app into a full-blown e-commerce powerhouse reached a fever pitch. Between January and October 2025 Americans spent more than ten billion dollars on TikTok Shop, double what was spent in the same span the previous year. What started as a few impulse buys now seems to have become a full-blown retail binge for many people.

Users from all walks of life describe the experience as compelling and hard to resist. For one, a Baltimore corset maker named Sam Reddy said TikTok Shop went from “annoying” at first to downright addictive. She began by buying materials for her work but soon found herself purchasing trendy snacks and random goods many of which remain unopened in her kitchen. Over the past six months alone, she spent nearly three thousand dollars. On top of that she incurred debts of a thousand dollars each with two buy-now-pay-later services. “It is spending I would not have done otherwise,” she told reporters, admitting she often lost track of how much money she was pouring into the app.

Then there is 33-year-old restaurant owner and influencer Samanta Gashi from Pennsylvania. She said that she had never considered herself a frequent online shopper until TikTok Shop began flooding her feed with product after product. She estimated that she spent about ten thousand dollars on over two hundred items in a matter of months. She confessed that many of those purchases never saw the light of day. Some clothes did not fit, some cosmetics were poor in quality and many products were never used at all. “I do have a lot of products that I have not used,” she said. “Most of them do not fit. Most of them are bad quality.”

Experts who study marketing and consumer behaviour warn that the platform’s design is a dangerous blend of entertainment and commerce. The seamless integration of shopping into the video feed blurs the line between passive scrolling and active buying. Stories and testimonials from creators, familiar faces influencing trends, give users a sense of trust, making it easier to tap “buy now” without much thought. One marketing professor described the phenomenon as “a perfect storm” for impulsive shopping.

Some financial therapists go as far as to call it “shoppertainment.” As one therapist explained, seeing a live person use or praise a product in a casual “day in the life” video lends instant social proof. It feels closer to advice from a friend than a corporate advertisement. This makes it especially hard for users to resist buying. For many the result is a closet full of half-used cosmetics, cabinets stocked with unused snacks, and piles of clothes that never leave their tags.

That seamlessness, the lack of friction between desire and purchase is at the heart of the problem. Unlike traditional online shopping, where you might pause, compare, think twice, TikTok Shop allows one-click buys straight from a feed. That fosters impulsive spending, often driven by fear of missing out. Failure to pause and reflect turns a casual scroll into shopping spree after shopping spree.

Those willing to look inwards admit that the purchases often bring regret. Reddy regrets many of her buys, especially bras that fell far short of basic quality. She says TikTok feels unrecognizable now, every other video is essentially an ad. The change, she argues, turned the site from a source of entertainment to a fast-paced shopping mall.

The trend raises uncomfortable questions. How many of us really need hundreds of items that never get used? How many buy-now-pay-later loans simply postpone the regret for another day? For many users the financial and emotional cost is growing heavy. As commentators on social media note, one does not always notice the spiral until it is well under way.

Some mental health specialists and financial advisors recommend practical steps to resist the urge. Suggestions include deleting saved payment information, avoiding buy-now-pay-later options and introducing friction into the process so that spending requires effort and thought. The idea is to slow the momentum to force a pause before the click so users can think rather than act on impulse.

In a culture where algorithms are designed to maximize engagement and sales, TikTok Shop stands as a stark example of how social media can warp habits and blur boundaries. For viewers it starts with entertainment. For many, it ends in overspending, debt and regret.The moment our feeds crossed the line from content to checkout we may have lost more than convenience.