by Alexis Margolin
TikTok has recently implemented a feature to allow businesses and companies to begin selling their products using TikTok shop. As the feature has grown in popularity, it has also created a large uprise in items which are nearly identical to each other being sold on the platform.
The reason behind this is that TikTok tends to boost videos which use the shop feature to promote a product. This is manipulative marketing and it inconveniences many who would much rather watch regular TikTok’, than be bombarded with ads. One TikTok user claims, “Six of the first 10 videos I got on my For You Page were ads, mostly of products I’d just clicked on in the Shop. I returned to TikTok through the day, each time to a feed that was peppered with Shop videos, largely from creators I’d never seen before” (Vox, 2023).
While TikTok shop may begin to push out items you viewed before, they slowly start to boost products from sellers you have never seen or interacted with before in order to sell you more products. If a video selling one of these products goes viral, many people will copy it and use it to their own advantage to get sales and revenue. Many of these sellers being boosted tend to sell their products at a ridiculously low cost, which ultimately leads to more competitions and the rise in scams. A TikTok influencer by the name of Iman Hamid reports that she purchased a TikTok Shop product for nearly half the price of the original product, once she tried the product she realized immediately it was a fake. She states, “I have used the product once and I could tell from the first use that it was fake, because it faded so fast and the color was off” (Buzzfeed, 2023). Luckily, Hamid was able to catch this scam and spread the news about it, but many others are unable to tell and TikTok has taken no action in preventing these kinds of scams without others bringing it to their attention first.
The over saturation and poor quality of the products being sold has caused many issues, but one of the main ones being over consumerism. This is because people from lower income households who do not have widespread access to high quality products can easily go on to TikTok shop and buy cheap products. This may seem beneficial, but the harm towards the environment as a result is detrimental as most products are fast fashion. An international article reports that fast fashion harms the environment by, “creating the clothes, transporting them, and then the clothing eventually being discarded, these brands are overall extremely harmful to the environment” (Aula News, 2023).
The products sold on TikTok are coming from these same brand that create fast fashion products, but many of the people purchasing these products are unaware of the harm towards the environment, and even if they are there may not be many other options available to them other than fast fashion as it is inexpensive and convenient.
TikTok shop may seem confusing at first, but it is almost overly simplified. Only with a few clicks on TikTok you can place an order in nearly a few minutes. A TikTok buyer reveals, “While the ease and simplicity of the shop does give me a bit of a thrill, it also gives me pause. Is this shopping experience too easy? Like maybe the ability to buy literally anything that someone proclaims as “viral” on TikTok in as much effort as it takes to hit “like” on a post seems bad for both my personal finances and the environment?” (Glamour, 2023).
The simplicity of TikTok shop makes consumerism easier than many other selling sites. TikTok also offers a lot of coupons making the products being sold even cheaper, this enables people to buy a lot of products and it promotes consumerism. TikTok can solve these issues by making sure sellers are only selling high quality products and not copying other people’s products or designs. This would cut down on the amount of identical products sold, which would help cut down on people taking advantage of the competitive market place that promotes consumerism and negatively impacts the environment.
The Drumbeat 