TikTok is a growing holiday shopping hub for Gen Z, but some zoomers wish the app didn’t exist

Gen Z‘s relationship with platforms like TikTok is more complicated than it seems at first glance. In the past three weeks, two different statistical studies have drawn drastically different conclusions about the cohort born between 1997 and 2012.

One report, from Fiverr, found that Gen Z’s TikTok Shop usage is set to go up during the upcoming holiday season. The other, conducted by The Harris Poll, revealed that many Gen Z respondents wish apps like TikTok, Snapchat, and X had never been developed.

According to the Fiverr data, TikTok Shop is starting to achieve saturation in the U.S. market nearly two years after its initial launch in that region. 54% of U.S. Gen Z respondents indicated that they would only use TikTok Shops to find gifts this holiday season. Approximately one-third of respondents plan to shop through Facebook and Instagram ads, and 24% claimed they will consult their favorite influencers for purchasing advice.

The survey also indicated some economic anxiety among Gen Z. Only 43% of them 

plan to spend more on gifts this year than they did a year ago, according to Fiverr. That means 57% of the cohort intends to spend the same or less than in 2023.

Gen Z’s anxieties are more starkly apparent in the Harris Poll data. The 61-year-old market research firm found that half of its zoomer respondents wish that X had never been invented. And this isn’t just an Elon Musk thing: 47% said the same thing about TikTok, and 43% for Snapchat.

Some platforms don’t inspire as much regret among the Harris Poll sample. Only 17% wish that the internet had never been invented, and both Netflix and YouTube (both longtime favorites among American youth) wound up with similar percentages on that axis (17% and 15%, respectively).

The results seem to show that Gen Z has regrets about the development of the social media industry, but the cohort is also doing something about it. 83% of Harris Poll respondents admitted to limiting their social media usage in some way. Unfollowing accounts (42%) and deleting apps (40%) were the most common tactics in that area.

But if the Fiverr results pan out as predicted, some members of Gen Z will increase their reliance on apps this holiday season. It’s also as if a group with a 15-year age range contains a vast tapestry of ideas, morals, and habits. Now, if only Congress could get that message, our national discourse might improve dramatically.