Mute, delete, unsubscribe — how some are curbing online shopping

Ms Cassandra Orakpo has had enough. Too much, in fact. Shopping on her phone had become so easy it had turned into a bad habit.

- Jordyn Holman and Aimee Ortiz

Ms Cassandra Orakpo has had enough. Too much, in fact. Shopping on her phone had become so easy it had turned into a bad habit. She bought a cake-decorating kit, thinking she would make her own birthday cake, and never even took it out of the box. She has at least 80 bottles of perfume stored in her closet. And despite all the clothes she has purchased, she feels she has nothing to wear.

"Clearly my buying has gotten to a place where it's bordering on hoarding," Ms Orakpo said.

So towards the end of last year, Ms Orakpo, 31, who lives in Houston, pledged to tame her buying habits. The first step was to scrub her accounts: She unsubscribed from daily e-mails from Shein; she changed her TikTok settings to avoid personalized ads; she blocked Temu on social media platform X. She also opted out of texts from brands like Fashion Nova, her nail salon and even her local bubble tea shop.

And then she told her more than 2,500 followers on TikTok about it.

Ms Orakpo joined a growing group of shoppers who are fed up with a constant barrage of marketing in their social feeds and phone alerts. Many have taken to TikTok—the site of much of their frustration—to declare that they are participating in "Low Buy 2025" or "No Buy 2025" and sharing the ways they are curbing their spending. Some "shop their closet" and others pledge to make sure their containers of blush hit pan before being enticed into buying a new one. The videos have garnered millions of views since the start of the year.

Avoiding sales pitches from big corporations, however, is harder than ever. In 2025, businesses are expected to spend nearly US$103 billion (S$137 billion) in advertising on social media, a 175 per cent increase since 2021.