What Does It Take to Quit Shopping? Mute, Delete and Unsubscribe.

Marketers followed consumers to social media and their phones. “Low Buy 2025” influencers are sharing tips for how to resist them.

Cassandra Orakpo 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’d 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 toward the end of last year, Ms. Orakpo, who is 31 and lives in Houston, pledged to tame her buying habits. The first step was to scrub her accounts: She unsubscribed from daily emails from Shein; she changed her TikTok settings to avoid personalized ads; she blocked Temu on 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.