TikTok Made Me Buy It: The Harms of Consumer Capitalism

Poppy-Anne Turner

On TikTok, a platform once associated with memes and dance trends, shopping has become inseparable from leisure. The rise of TikTok shop, driven by AI-powered algorithms, demonstrates how capitalism has colonised our downtime. After all, we live in a world where capitalist markets reach into almost every part of our lives. In the digital age, AI, and the algorithms that power it, shape what we see, what we buy, and even how we think about ourselves.

In many of ways, this can cause algorithms to almost act as an omnipresence within neoliberal societies. AI and algorithmic curation are popular topics in discourse, yet their actual operation often remains unclear. Put simply, AI in our everyday lives works through algorithms – coded systems embedded in search engines, apps, and online platforms. Companies harness this technology to rank, analyse, and interpret user data, ultimately with the goal of increasing sales and maximising profit. Because of this role, algorithms are often described as ‘sociotechnological systems’ that are technological in design, but social in impact. They influence what we see, what we choose, and how we think about consumption, acting as ‘non-human mediators that actively shape consumer culture’ (Airoldi & Rokka, 2022, p.412). Nowhere is this clearer than TikTok, where algorithms predict, manipulate, and monetise desire. The platform’s AI-driven recommendation system turns attention into data, and data into sales, blurring the line between content and commerce.

From a philosophical perspective, consumer culture can be understood as epiphenomenal to capitalism, meaning it exists because capitalism shapes and sustains it (Arnould et al., 2021), but this blog will question that claim. TikTok shop exemplifies how consumer culture becomes an unquestioned norm. The phrase ‘TikTok made me buy it’ encapsulates this epiphenomenal process: consumption is not only normalised but celebrated and absorbed into social life as a shared digital ritual. Once an idea is reinforced by enough people, it becomes accepted as shared knowledge within a given social system (Rostek, 2024). Perhaps the most relatable example of this in neoliberal societies would be experiences of debt, as borrowing money is not only normal, but actively encouraged because it fuels economic growth (Horsley, 2016; Vetta and Muriel, 2024). Over time, this normalisation makes debt feel like an inevitable part of life, rather than something to be questioned. This is where harm comes in.

Shared cultural norms like this feed into the Symbolic Order, the system of meanings and values that capitalism maintains (Hall and Winlow, 2018). To ensure their survival within this order and promote feelings of inclusion and non-suffering, people feel pressure to display certain signs of success, style, or belonging, often through what they consume (Hall and Winlow, 2025). For many, consumption offers a fleeting sense of safety or relief from the discomfort of life under neoliberal capitalism (Winlow and Hall, 2013). In this way, the cultural norms surrounding consumerism are not just harmless habits as they are often presented, they are mechanisms that keep us tethered to, and dependent on, the very systems that cause harm. Influencers on TikTok function as conduits of this Symbolic Order, modelling the signs of success and desirability that followers internalise. Their curated performances of happiness and consumption promise relief from the insecurities of neoliberal life, a digital illusion of non-suffering.

This dynamic can be understood by mobilising the Lacan’s concepts of lack and desire. As Mieli (2025) explains, objects of desire are often imagined as what subjects feel they are missing, an attempt to fill an existential void or achieve a sense of satisfaction. This feeling of lack is something many experience daily, and it is precisely this emotional absence that consumer culture seeks to exploit. Within the login of late capitalism, consumptions offers a temporary resolution to this lack, a fantasy of wholeness that is always destined to fail. McGowan (2016) in Capitalism and Desire, argues that consumerism is structured around this paradox as it continually produces dissatisfaction so that the subject remains caught in a cycle of desire, pursuing fleeting satisfaction through consumptions. Thus, the act of ‘retail therapy’ becomes a socially sanctioned ritual through which individuals attempt to soothe the discontent generated by the very system that profits from it.  

Capitalism has never been static. It takes many different forms, and as Fisher (2022) argues, it adapts to social change to survive. In the digital age, this adaptability is most visibly in the way capitalism has reshaped itself around new technologies. The rise of AI and its algorithms show how the system evolves to protect its power and ensure that capital accumulation continues. Algorithms now play a central role in shaping consumer culture and influencing patterns of consumption (Airoldi and Rokka, 2022), creating instrumental power for their capacity to impact social processes (Beer, 2017).

Companies such as TikTok exploit their awareness of the power they have over patterns of consumption by designing algorithms that analyse consumer data, using the insights they gain to draw people back into cycles of consumption (Laapotti and Raapana, 2022), by ranking and sorting through data sets provided by the user to generate personalised recommendations, which are presented to the consumer as though they are tailored to their best interests (Hayes et al, 2021). Yet, these recommendations are not neutral, they are designed to maximise profit through the targeted advertisements they facilitate. The now familiar phrase, ‘TikTok made me buy it!’ captures how the algorithms in apps like TikTok are able to make choices for us, acting as an omnipresence in our everyday lives (Tang, 2021). As they become increasingly dependent upon technological devices, neoliberalism’s consumer subjects find this presence difficult to escape.  

This issue is perhaps further exacerbated by the fact that smartphones are increasingly acting as ‘portable markets’ of sorts, wherein targeted advertising has become a constant feature of the apps present on the device. TikTok targets younger consumers, particularly those from Gen Z and the Millennials (Amin and Scorita, 2025). As a company led platform, it has generated ‘$23 billion annual revenue’ (Tafradzhiyski, 2025) and is indisputably one of the most popular leisure activities in neoliberal societies, boasting ‘24.8 million active users’ in the United Kingdom alone (The Global Statistics, 2025). There is a plethora of ways by which this platform makes money from consumers. For example, it profits from advertisements facilitated by its platform and commissions for sales which occur within its confines. Yet this is often overlooked by consumers of the app, who scroll through content, unintentionally furthering TikTok’s business model. The algorithms within the platform are designed to analyse the behaviours and patterns of user consumption, to ensure that appropriate recommendations are provided to them, either by targeted advertisements in posts or by providing video recommendations tailored to users’ likes to ensure they keep consuming content off the platform (Larsen, 2024). TikTok dissolves the boundary between consuming media and consuming products. The same gesture – a swipe – serves both leisure and labour, pleasure and purchase. The user becomes an active participant in their own commodification.

By providing tailored content to the consumer, a plethora of harms can occur. For example, the tailored content can boost the user’s wish to consume, creating potential for binge-scrolling. Binge-scrolling is something all of us can relate to – it’s essentially scrolling through content on a given platform as a pass time, or as a mode of procrastination. It is for this reason that binge-scrolling is often considered to be a socially acceptable leisure activity despite the harms it connotes, outlined in Smith and Raymen’s (2018) research into deviant leisure. Ironically, there is often an awareness surrounding the harms of this leisure activity, but they are often disavowed and dismissed as being the norm. But this pattern of activity can cause a series of harms depending on the subjective experiences of the individual consuming content on the app. For example, as previously mentioned, TikTok primarily targets younger audiences, most of whom will be either in education or in early stages of their careers. Thus, binge-scrolling promoted by algorithmically tailored content can promote a plethora of harms, such as hindering their capacity to further their grades should they be in education, or their careers should they be in occupational fields, creating pressure on younger generations.

To further this point, if you consider the fact that binge-scrolling results in prolonged exposure to TikTok’s tailored content, there is potential for psychological harm to occur, particularly when you consider the role of Electronic-Word-of-Mouth (EWOM) and the idea of Fear-of-Missing-Out (FOMO). Globally, consumer culture is highly influenced by E-WoM, as it promotes materialism and expression based on branding (Taylor et al., 2025). The idea of ‘brand evangelism’ considers how customer enthusiasm can create brand loyalty, which causes a chain reaction wherein positive views can be shared online via EWOM, allowing positive brand imagery to be created, allowing for the company’s consumer base to expand (Iyadi, 2024).

Coinciding with the positive impacts for the companies is the presence for psychological harm to be inflicted on the consumer, as E-WOM often creates pathways for purchased items to be displayed – causing a relationship between E-WoM and the need for social status (Pangarkar et al, 2023). This can create feeling such as Fear-of-Missing-Out (FoMO), wherein anxious feelings permeate the subject when a purchasing event occurs which holds items which may be able to boost their social status (Durusm et al, 2023). This fear is often used as a marketing strategy by companies to increase brand desirability amongst targeted consumers (Hewer, 2024), causing FOMO to become important for the development and expansion of consumer markets across various platforms, including TikTok. This demonstrates the ultimate psychological harm associated with striving for social status by participating in consumer culture, which is created when the identification of a subject becomes inherently construed in their patterns of consumption.

Moving beyond the harms of tailored content and binge-scrolling, many academics argue that the targeted advertisements used by companies are highly manipulative (see Mager, 2012). Fenwick (2022) has highlighted that this has caused ethical concerns to be raised regarding the use of algorithms by companies. These have been labelled ‘normative concerns’, which are outputs from algorithms deemed to be unfair to consumers. Increasingly, neoliberal subjects identify themselves with the products they consume (Sharlmanov and Kostovska, 2025), thus further demonstrating how targeted advertisements increase pressure on younger generations. This is emphasised in research conducted by Deustch and Theodorou (2010), who found that items used as an exhibition of the subjects consumption are used to gain status within social systems. This alludes to the needs of the ideal ego, wherein the subject will strive to reach their image of perfection to further their intention of being perceived positively by the other. In essence, items become consumed by the subject to achieve what ultra-realists refer to as ‘non-suffering’ (Hall and Winlow, 2025), a position of security driven by the need for social acceptance – the desire to be socially accepted by other social actors within a given system (Wolsnik, 2018). Thus, consumption can be used as a mechanism by the subject to provide an illusory sense of safety (Gornik-Durose, 2020), as it fills the emotional gaps in the subject’s life, enhancing the emotional experience of non-suffering.

Paradoxically, however, this pursuit of non-suffering through consumption often generates new forms of suffering. As individuals attempt to soothe emotional discomfort through purchasing, they may find their finances increasingly strained, drawing them into what Apraido et al. (2025, p.89) describe as the ‘digital financial ecosystem’. On TikTok, this ecosystem manifests through features such as ‘buy now, pay later’ options via Klarna or PayPal, integrated seamlessly in the TikTok shop. These financial tools encourage impulsive spending, particularly among Gen Z consumers, and normalise borrowing as a routine part of everyday consumption (Hidayah et al., 2025). In doing so, TikTok demonstrates how easily digital platforms can foster patterns of overconsumption and debt, making financial harm a standard by-product of algorithmic capitalism.

Targeted advertisements provided by TikTok are also enhanced as the platform has become an expansive base for celebrities and influencers. Although catered content based upon consumers’ influencer preferences do not necessarily equate to the provision of targeted advertisements, the influencers the consumer watches may collaborate with a brand by advertising the company’s products – a dynamic often referred to as ‘celebrity endorsement’, wherein the influencer or celebrity endorses and recommends a product to their audiences. This arguably promotes harm as younger generations are more likely to seek influencers as role models as they navigate through the digital age and more likely to purchase items recommended by those they find.

By examining the various elements of consumer culture facilitated algorithmically on TikTok, this post has endeavoured to demonstrate how consumer culture as a feature of capitalism perpetuates harm on multiple levels, perhaps to an extent where we should consider it to be generative rather than epiphenomenal (Hall et al. 2013). TikTok represents capitalism’s latest evolutionary form: an interactive marketplace where consumption is gamified and algorithmically personalised. The platform does not merely respond to consumer demand – it creates it, folding shopping into the architecture of sociality itself. This total integration of consumption, leisure, and identity production signals a new phase of algorithmic capitalism. Yet, within this system, enjoyment becomes part of the mechanism linking desire with control. Users derive pleasure from participating in their own commodification, from the thrill of discovery, the satisfaction of purchase, or the illusion of connection. This enjoyment is not incidental, it is essential, binding subjects affectively to the very structures that exploit that. We know TikTok manipulates our desires, yet we keep scrolling, liking, and buying. This is ultra-realism’s central paradox: the subject’s submission to the very system that harms them. In this sense, TikTok is an external mirror of neoliberal subjectivity itself.

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