Social media platforms and your fast fashion consumption
At this point, the dangers of fast fashion for our planet are no longer a secret — but what role does social media have in it?
We know the fast fashion industry (and companies Shein, H&M and Zara) are polluting our planet at incredible speeds. In fact, the industry produces over 1.2 billion tons of CO2 every year which is about 10% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. For perspective, this is more than both international flights and maritime shipping combined. And this is not going to stop anytime soon as this number is estimated to increase by more than 60% by 2030.
But, the purpose of this article is not to discuss the environmental, social, and overall long-term costs of the fast fashion industry. There are numerous scientific journals, documentaries, articles, and video essays scattered across the web detailing this far better than I could attempt to in this short article.
Instead, the conversation I want to start here is one about the relationship between fast fashion and social media.
I recently came across an article titled “Deleting social media changed my relationship with fast fashion” and it struck a chord. In the article, the author describes her conversion from a “self-professed fast fashion addict to a conscious consumer who now only shops secondhand”. How was she able to do this? You guessed it. Simply by deleting all social media apps from her phone. This simple act and its quite significant effect came as a surprise to the author, and also to me who read it, and now perhaps you reading this.
The question is, how and why? How could something so simple have led to something so not simple for so many of us?
Then it hit me like the ton of clothes in those haul videos (not CO2). You know the ones. We have all seen them. The Shein, H&M, Zara, etc. fashion hauls littered throughout YouTube, TikTok, Instagram and Facebook shorts. These hauls seemed to increase by the hundreds every week across these favorite social media platforms at some point between 2020 and 2021.
These sometimes long, sometimes short videos in which conventionally attractive young women share the copious number of items they bought from these brands for seemingly very little. Except it is rarely little amounts as some spend hundreds and even thousands of dollars on these hauls. The focus of the videos is rarely on the quality of or even the look of the items on the wearer, but more importantly on the fact that “this beautiful pencil skirt only cost me 15$”. Of course, they also do their viewers the favor of including links or reference tags to purchase the items themselves.
The videos and other content (pictures) are then in themselves nothing more than ads for the company. And the influencers doing the promoting typically make commissions. In other words, they get paid to make the content.
But… it’s not just the hauls. There are also the perfectly framed Instagram pictures or stories. Add to that the actual web and social media campaigns the companies themselves run, and it’s quite clear that there is no escaping their content. Even someone like myself that is very rarely on social media (and that has never used TikTok), ever considered that social media really had much of an influence on my consuming behaviors. But my frequent YouTube and occasional Instagram usage was enough to still expose me to these videos and other ad content.
Which begs the question, are social media and these fashion influencers to blame for the significant increase in our fast fashion consumption over the past several years?
How does social media affect the fast fashion problem?
Before the age of social media, fashion inspiration or fashion influencing was typically reserved for celebrities and supermodels. Then, the clothes/accessories worn by these individuals were for the vast majority of us something to appreciate but rarely attain (read; afford) — unless you were particularly gifted with sewing or thread and needle savvy. But with the rise of fast fashion companies, social media, and the fashion influencers on these platforms, this is no longer the case.
Let’s consider how all this works together to increase our fashion overconsumption.
1. Hauls, pictures, and other content work to instil a sense of FOMO or fear of missing out. And it works because we implicitly/subconsciously believe what attractive people tell us. So when we see these individuals sporting something that further elevates their perceived attractiveness, and then also hear how cheap it is, we are more inclined to want to get one for ourselves. There is also our basic human tendency to imitate others so we can fit in which can distort our perceptions and make us forget the impact implications of our behaviors– in this case buying from fast fashion companies because everyone else is seemingly doing it. Meaning we are all susceptible and no one is “safe”. Not even the sustainability-minded consumer conscious about the types of companies they support and where and how they spend their money.
2. The fast fashion industry primarily targets and caters to Gen Z and younger millennials who are more impressionable and easily influenced by their social community. These individuals are also conveniently the exact demographic most active on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They are hyperaware and conscious of others’ opinions. Add to that the tendency for social media to feature only the “highlight reels” of living which in terms of fashion might translate into wearing only the most up-to-date trends, never being pictured wearing the same clothing articles to create the illusion of having an endless wardrobe, etc. Surely, it is not difficult to see how this need to stay up to date with the current trends and fit in fuel consumerism- buying for the sake of buying rather than actual necessity. But better that than to be labeled as untrendy, outdated, or “cheugy” by peers.
3. Social media (and fast fashion in itself) fuels and feeds into our need for instant gratification. We are fed feeds chock full of relentless, enticing content and tailored ads promoting new trends for us to adopt. And now, platforms like Instagram are increasingly adding e-commerce functionality that make it that much easier for users to buy (instantly and quickly) what they see without stopping much to think if they actually need it. We can expect this trend to continue and for more platforms to double down on such features in the future because partnering with brands benefits their bottom line. And we might even get to a point where we can make purchases directly on the social media platforms themselves without having to go through brands’ e-commerce sites.
So where does that leave us? What does it mean for the future of fast fashion? Or how we use our social media platforms? Only time can tell. But we have been calling on fashion companies, world leaders, and even individual consumers to solve the problem of fast fashion. Perhaps it is also necessary that we include social media companies to evaluate their role in this issue.
What do you think? Do you think social media has had an influence on the out-of-control growth of fast fashion? Do you think it has affected your buying behaviors? Let me know in the comments below.
About this article
This article has been written by a student on the Grenoble Ecole de Management’s Advanced Masters in Digital Strategy Management. As part of a content creation assignment, students are given the task of writing articles based on their digital interests and disseminating the articles online. Articles are marked but we make minimal changes to the content. Thanks for reading! James Barisic, Programme Director, MS DSM.
