How ‘TikTok Made Me Buy It’ mantra is destroying women’s finances – as as one mum battles £40k debt

FROM Birkin bags to high-end kitchens and luxury hols, social media dishes up an endless stream of lavish lifestyles – and it’s having a devastating toll on women’s finances. Scrolling through her social media feed, it was a stranger pictured at Disneyland that caught mum-of-two Lauren Chambers’ eye. “Something about this woman and her kids enjoying this amazing holiday made me click through to her profile,” says the wedding photographer and events planner from Coleraine, Northern Ireland.

There, she found posts boasting a spotless, high-end kitchen, gorgeous co-ordinated outfits and a perfect children’s playroom. Comparing it to her own house, with all the chaos of life with two young children, Lauren, 35, felt a mixture of exhaustion and hope. “This woman seemed just like me,” she remembers. “I felt a rush of envy and determination. If she could whisk her kids away to Disneyland Paris, then so could I! That’s when I reached for the credit card. I was just one click closer to one day being in £40,000 of debt.”.

From handbags and holidays to perfectly-put-together houses and beauty hauls, social media serves up a constant stream of lavish lifestyles. These extravagant displays are now so ubiquitous that they’ve been dubbed “wealth porn” – and it’s having a devastating impact on many women’s finances. That’s in part because women are on social media more. Ofcom’s annual report on the UK’s digital habits found that in 2024, women were averaging half an hour more online every day compared to men, and that doubles among Gen Z women. And while men are checking out Reddit and LinkedIn, women are spending their days on Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

It’s these particular platforms, and the “wealth porn” content they display, that’s driving debt. A study found that Instagram influencers who are paid to endorse buy-now-pay-later schemes have led to £652million worth of borrowing among followers looking to replicate their lifestyles. They found that the average cost of the items in each of their posts came to £1,800.**. Meanwhile, #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt has racked up more than 12 million posts.

Lauren says: “Money has always been a struggle for me. My son Tyler was born in March 2011, when I was 21. Nine months later, my relationship broke down and I was back at my parents’ house, a single mum and counting out my pennies to buy a cup of tea.”. Determined to improve her life, Lauren graduated with a degree in criminology and met her now-husband Jason in April 2014 through a friend. All the while, social media ticked away in the background.

“For years, that only meant engaging with friends and family on Facebook, which didn’t have any impact on my spending,” she says. But by the time her daughter Isla was born in September 2015, Instagram had changed everything. “Suddenly, it wasn’t just celebrities showing off their gorgeous homes and wardrobes in glossy magazines. My phone was full of apparently normal people living this lavish life.

“These women were strangers, but I felt like they could be my relatives, colleagues or friends. The more I saw their picture-perfect worlds, the more I felt that this was the life I should be living.”. Lauren splashed out on clothes and make-up, holidays and interiors – including hundreds on a new sofa – trying to keep up with the standard she saw on her socials. “I spent £2,000 on the family trip to Disneyland Paris and, while it was great when we were there, after that immediate dopamine hit, I was left with the worry of what that meant for my finances.

“We just didn’t have the money. Even once I’d started my photography business in 2017, Jason was working a minimum-wage job in a factory. He had no idea that the store cards, credit cards and loans were spiralling out of control. “At the time, I told myself that it was fine, because I was meeting all the monthly repayments. But really, I was in denial and it was impacting my sleep and stress levels.

“I didn’t realise back then that Instagram and TikTok were showing me a totally unrealistic standard of ‘success’. And I just couldn’t stop scrolling, because it drew me in, even though it made me feel inadequate and unhappy with what I had.”. This is a perfect description of wealth porn, says Elaine Kasket, cyberpsychologist and author of Reset: Rethinking Your Digital World For A Happier Life.

“Comparing ourselves to others is a basic, evolutionary instinct. It was essential to our survival, because being accepted meant being kept in the tribe. If you didn’t fit in, you would be rejected and you couldn’t survive alone. But that human instinct never went away. “By the 20th century, happiness with your life still depended largely on sizing yourself up against what other people had. In the pre-digital world, that instinct had morphed into the desire to ‘keep up with the Joneses’,” she explains.