‘No-buy 2024’ Gains Steam on TikTok Among Beauty Shoppers
Last year’s “de-influencing” trend has found its next, heightened iteration.
In an aim to reject hyper-consumerism, a growing community of social media users are partaking in “no-spend 2024,” specifically with regard to purchasing makeup, hair and skin care products — the overconsumption of which is perpetuated by platforms like TikTok.
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The #NoSpend2024 hashtag has garnered more than 464,000 views on TikTok, while videos tagged with a more general #NoSpend have topped 62.8 million views. @Abidaunton, one user who’s joined the challenge, recounted in a February TikTok video the moment she realized her makeup consumption was “out of control” was when beauty influencers’ PR unboxing videos began routinely featuring products she also owned.
“I’m not an influencer, I’m an ordinary person — why do I have all these products? By the end of [2023] I was embarrassed by how much makeup I was buying,” said Daunton, whose no-spend year is focused specifically on reducing makeup consumption, strictly allowing for necessary “refill” purchases.
Her journey also includes de-cluttering 100 products within her existing collection by the end of February — an Erborian concealer that “was hydrating, but didn’t give enough coverage”; a Bobbi Brown primer-moisturizer that’s “on the brink of being expired,” and so on.
As is the case with many who are partaking, Daunton’s documentation of her no-buy journey on TikTok has been meticulous. Another participant, influencer Lara B., who does not publicly disclose her surname and goes by @laralikesmascara across platforms, has similarly been sharing her own learnings and answering viewer questions about no-buy, which she has been sporadically doing in months-long increments since 2019 — before the movement went mainstream.
“No-buy, or low-buy, has become the status quo for me,” said Lara B., a longtime beauty-lover and reformed impulse shopper. “Before I started, I thought ‘Oh, it will be a real slog to not ever buy makeup,’ but I’ve actually found it very rewarding. Putting constraints on my collection has made me very creative in finding new ways to use my products and learn about my preferences in a way that I don’t think I ever did before, because I was just so focused on buying new things.”
Though Bulger’s native platform is YouTube, documenting no-buy on TikTok, which she dowloaded last June, has exposed a new audience to the movement.
“On TikTok, my content gets pushed to anyone who’s consuming makeup content. Even if it’s not able to make someone say ‘OK, I’m not buying any more makeup until 2025,’ it’s at least introducing the idea of, ‘maybe I should think about just how much I have in my collection,'” Lara B. said.
Though Lara B. is steadfast in her commitment to low-buy, she admits E.l.f Beauty’s seeming rapid-fire succession of dupe launches has caught her attention, most recently with the brand’s new Creamy Lip Liners, which have gone viral in part for only costing $2 each.
“People are saying they’re comparable to the Charlotte Tilbury [Pillow Talk] lip liners — I don’t need more lip liners, but one day when I finish off a couple of my own or feel there’s a certain color that I’m missing in my collection — those have definitely piqued my interest,” she said.
Around this time last year, #DeInfluencing, the tag for which has more than 1.4 billion views on TikTok, gained steam as users took to the platform to air their grievances with viral beauty products and debunk the idea of any and all trending products being haphazardly designated as “must-haves.”
Since TikTok Shop’s formal rollout to the U.S. in September, beauty has reigned as the platform’s top-selling category, though some users have expressed fatigue with the prevalence of Shop-related content on their For You Pages, in part adding fuel to the de-influencing and no-spend movements.
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